I was drifting through a black sea and above me in the light I could see Carmen and Vivian dancing with a man I didn't know while Claude Bonsentir played the violin. I tried to swim upward toward them but the sea was thick and cold and I wasn't making any progress.
***
When I woke up it was raining. I was on my back with an iron ache in my head and the rain coming down steadily in my face, bright as it passed through the light from the double glass doors to my building. The pain in my head rang like an anvil when I moved. I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. Okay, Marlowe, you're a tough guy. You can get up. Just roll over on your side. I tried it and felt my stomach heave. I held still until it passed. Attaboy, Marlowe, halfway there. Now get your eyes open. Good boy. Now get to one knee. Nothing to it, you've been sapped before. I stayed there balanced on one knee while the rainy night swirled around me and slowly came to a halt. I got my feet under me and stood. The world moved in a circle again and I swayed with it until it settled back down. Easy.
There was a soft angry swelling behind my ear, and a gash on my jawline that felt as if it had bled and scabbed over. I felt my pockets. Nothing was missing. The gun was still under my arm where it had stayed dry while I was getting socked and sapped. Good thing I hadn't gotten it out. It would be all wet now.
I got the key in the lock after a couple of tries and opened the doors and went in. Upstairs I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like I had been dragged in by a cat and rejected. I got some ice from the refrigerator and put it in a facecloth and held it against the bruise on the back of my head. When I took the facecloth away there was a little blood on it. All my teeth seemed to be in the right place and still anchored.
I sat in a chair near the window and looked out at the rain and let the ice rest against the back of my head. There was no sign on the street below of the black Buick.
The fact that someone, probably Simpson, didn't want me looking into this case wasn't a news flash. I knew that before. Now I knew how much they didn't want me.
***
Finally I reached the phone over and called Bernie Ohls at home.
"You know what time it is?" he said when he answered.
"I need the owner of a black Buick sedan, late model, California tags." I gave him the number.
"Sure, Marlowe. I was reading my kid a story, but hell, I'll go right down and open up the hall of records and look this up personal and hand-carry it right over to you."
"Couple of guys driving that thing roughed me up, told me to stay away from the Carmen Sternwood case."
"Gee, I hope it didn't spoil your good looks, Marlowe."
"I figure it's Simpson, but maybe the license plates will tell me something."
"And maybe they won't," Ohls said. "I'll call you in the morning."
"You got an ID yet on the corpse off Beverly Glen?"
"Tentative," Ohls said. "Neighborhood dog showed up with the hand. Proud as hell, wagging his tail. His owner nearly croaked. Assuming it goes with the other parts of the body, the victim is a B-picture actress named Lola Monforte. Last known address was a flop on Melrose, but she hasn't been there in several months."
"That's it?"
"That's all so far," Ohls said. "Us coppers just have to plod along, you know. We ain't geniuses like you private-license boys. I figure you'll have it all solved for us by the time I get you this car registration."
"Any connection to Bonsentir? Or Simpson?"
"Don't know," Ohls said. "Hard to find out."
Ohls hung up. Outside the rain came down in a light steady drizzle. Not hard enough to wash gullies in the canyons where people built expensive houses on sand and runoff. Just enough to keep the reservoirs from drying up and to help the lawns a little. I opened the window. The damp mysterious smell of a wet night came in.
The ache in my head had dulled. My collar was soaked from the ice pack and I dropped the nearly melted cubes on the rug. It was after ten on a rainy night in the city of the angels. No one knocked on the door. No one called. No one was interested in my travel plans. No one seemed much concerned about my health.
I called Vivian Regan. The phone rang a long time before the horsefaced maid answered. She was sorry but Mrs. Regan had taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed. Was there a message? No message. I hung up the phone and went back to staring at the misting rain which drifted down as silently as snow.
CHAPTER 19
Ohls called while I was drinking my second cup of coffee and trying to decide about breakfast. My head felt like the inside of a snare drum.
"Buick's registered to an outfit called Neville Realty Trust, got an address in the Neville Valley, up north."
I got a pencil. Ohls gave me the address.
"Any names attached?" I said.
"Not on the registration. I haven't looked any further. Figure that's your job."
"Sure," I said. "No one sapped you."
"My heart bleeds," Ohls said and hung up.
***
In my office with coffee and a roll I'd picked up in the drugstore downstairs, I got out my map book. The Neville Valley was maybe 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains.
I called my client.
When Norris came on the phone, I said, "Marlowe. With a report."
"How very kind of you, Mr. Marlowe," Norris said.
"Looking for Carmen so far has got me threatened by a tough Mexican, involved in a mutilation murder, slugged with brass knuckles and sapped by person or persons unknown."
"Good heavens, sir, I never wanted you to get hurt."
"Nor did I, Norris," I said, "but the point is this thing is a much larger thing than it looked like it was going to be."
"As I have said, sir, the General left me well provided for. I could pay you a rather handsome fee."
"No need for that, Norris. There's so much money floating around the fringes of this case that it's hard not to twist an ankle stepping over it. I'll find a fee okay. But it seems like more dangerous going than either of us thought when I started."
"I anticipated only whatever danger Miss Carmen presented, sir."
"Which is not inconsiderable. But it's beginning to look attractive to me now."
"Do you wish to withdraw, sir?"
"You bet I do," I said. "But I won't. I just wanted you to know what was happening."
"I rather expected that you would not withdraw, sir. Might you give me some of the details?" I did.
When I was through there was a quiet pause. Then Norris said, "I'm sure you will be adequate to the task, Mr. Marlowe."
"I'm sure I will too, Norris," I said. "I would be even more adequate if I knew exactly what the task was."
"From my perspective, sir, if I may, it is to find Miss Carmen, sir."
"Yes, Norris, I guess it is."
We hung up. I put my map book under my arm, made sure I had my gun and some extra cartridges. It hadn't done me any good yet, but it made me feel like a detective. Then I locked the office and went out to my car.
***
It took about five hours to drive up to Neville Valley. I got there a little after two in the afternoon, with a high hard sky glaring down and the temperature in the nineties.
Neville Valley was the name of a region, and a town in the center of the region. The region was a drab lowland in the foothills with the Neville River running through the center of it. Right beside the river the valley was lush, but a mile from the river was near desert land, parched, infertile, and hardscrabble. The town of Neville Valley was at the point where the river cascaded over a small decline strewn with boulders and provided the only white water probably in a thousand square miles. It was the only place where the river ran fast, before it slowed into a series of huge looping meanders that made a convoluted green stripe down the center of the broad ugly valley.
I pulled my car, nose in, on the parking apron in front of a low white building with a broad front porch that ran the length of it. A sign on the roof of the porch said the river run inn. There was a double screen door leading into a dark lobby with a dark oak desk along the left wall and a broad staircase directly opposite the entrance. To the right was a combination dining room and bar, which seemed empty. Behind the desk was a pretty, red-haired girl in a white peasant blouse. The red hair was held in check by a white scarf tied behind her neck. She had white skin and a scatter of freckles across the cheekbones and when she smiled dimples appeared in each cheek.
"You look like a man who's driven a long way," she said when I came to register.
"Bar open?" I said.
"Will be as soon as you get registered and the bartender gets in there."
"Where is he now?" I said.
Her cheeks dimpled. "Registering you," she said.
I grinned at her.
"Okay then," I said. "I'll hurry."
When I got through signing in and she'd given me a room key and asked about luggage and been informed that I was wearing it, we retired to the bar. I sat on a stool, she opened the hinged bar section that allowed her in behind it and came down the bar top where I sat.
"What'll it be, buddy?" she said, lowering her voice and sounding as gruff as a twenty-three-year-old redhead with blue-green eyes could sound.
I ordered a gimlet. She mixed it up expertly and poured it perfectly into the glass in exactly the right amount, leaving nothing but ice in the shaker. It was cool and dark in the bar. And quiet, as only a good bar in the middle of the afternoon can be. I sipped the gimlet and let the cool bite of it run down my throat.
"Can you tell me where the Neville Realty Trust is located?" I said.
"Sure. Got a little office on Otis Street, out the hotel, turn left one block, turn right. You'll see it. Got the name right in the window."
She smiled at me again, her cheeks dimpling. Her red hair was the dark thick kind, she probably called it auburn, and it fell in soft curls to her shoulders, where the white scarf held it back from her face.
"What do they do their business in?" I asked. "Farmland? Doesn't seem much salable real estate around here."
"Not now." The redhead smiled as widely as it seemed possible to smile. "But pretty soon there will be. There's a big government project coming to the valley. Going to do a big land-reclamation with the Neville River and irrigate the whole valley. Everyone says it will mean a whole new boom for the area: farmland, tourism, growth. Everybody's excited about it. We got somebody from Washington in here every week, and a bunch of people from Sacramento. You involved in that?"
"No," I said. "I don't own much property. So the Neville Realty people are buying up farmland in anticipation of the boom?"
"Farmland?" The redhead looked startled. "No. They're buying water rights. People are getting good money for the water rights around here. Government has to acquire them to do the project, you know?"
"Sure," I said. "And Neville Realty is buying them up for the government?"
"Well, yes. I mean sure, I guess so. Everybody's real excited about it. You aren't with the government, are you?"
I shook my head.
"I didn't think so," she said. "You don't look like somebody with the government, that's for sure. I bet you're one of those Los Angeles people interested in this. Lots of them stay here."
"That so?" I said. "What's Los Angeles got to do with this?"
"Oh, you know, money people. They're always around when anything big is happening, don't you know?"
"I do know, in fact," I said. "You make a hell of a gimlet."
"My dad used to drink them," she said. "He built this place."
"Did a good job too," I said. "Know any of the people work at Neville Realty?"
She shook her head. "Not really," she said. "They're not Neville Valley people. They came in a year or so ago and opened the office. It used to be a feed store in there before. But business was so bad that they had to sell out. Everybody's hoping this land-reclamation water project will change everything."
"What's your name?" I said.
"Wendy," she said. "Wendy Clausen."
I put out my hand.
"It's nice to meet you, Wendy," I said. She shook my hand and smiled her wide smile.
"A pleasure, Mr. Marlowe."
I thanked her for the drink and the talk and got up and went out to visit the Neville Realty Trust. The heat, when I came out of the dim hotel lobby, was something to wade through, unyielding, implacable, and inhumane. There was almost no one on the drowsy main street as I turned left, walked a block and turned right. The only life I saw was a black and tan collie with a white chest sleeping on the front steps of a hardware store.
There was a little gravel parking lot next to the office of Neville Realty Trust. There was a Ford pickup truck parked there and a gray Mercury sedan. No black Buick. There was a big storefront-style window across the front with a black and gold sign in ornate Gothic lettering. There was a little bell on the glass-paneled front door, and when I walked in, the bell tinkled pleasantly. There were two people in the room: a fat woman with a very red face whose flowered blouse stuck to her in the heat, and a sharp-featured guy with a long chin and slick black hair. He looked happy in the heat, like one of those reptiles who need it to loosen up and come awake. A big floor fan was wasting its time in the corner of the room.