Perchance to Dream (21 page)

    "Not a peep," I said.

    His eyes widened but he was silent. Without clothing, his soft body was fleshy and white. I looked around the room. On the wall next to the bed, hanging on a hook, was a lacy peignoir. With the gun still in Simpson's mouth, I said to Carmen, "Put that robe on."

    She smiled at me that loopy void smile that she had and put her thumb in her mouth. As always, it was supposed to make me jump in the air and click my heels. As always, it didn't work.

    "If you make a sound I'll kill you," I said.

    I took the gun out of Simpson's mouth and went and got the peignoir off the hook and slipped my gun under my arm while I forced Carmen's arms through the sleeves and buttoned the two buttons, which didn't do a very good job of holding the thing together. There was a sash, too, and I tied it around her waist. Then I took my gun out from under my arm again, pulled the sheet and two blankets up over Simpson's head, took a firm grip on Carmen's wrist, and went out of the room and into the corridor. As I closed the door behind me I heard Simpson, muffied through two blankets, yell "Help!" Five feet down the corridor I couldn't hear him.

    "Where are we going?" Carmen said. She didn't seem scared. She seemed excited. Her lips were pulled back over her small white teeth. They were sharp teeth and whiter than teeth had any business being.

    "Home," I said.

    We went up the ladder well to the deck, with my gun in my right hand and my left with a death grip on Carmen's wrist. On deck there was only the boy in the sailor suit at the stern, gazing out over the black water at the shoreline.

    "Shhh," I said to Carmen.

    She giggled, her little sharp teeth showing even in the pale moonlight, and screamed as loud as she could. The boy in the sailor suit whirled, clawing at the gun in its regulation holster. I fired once and he yelped and staggered against the rail and then pitched forward. I heard doors open below me and footsteps on the ladder wells. I dragged Carmen to the rail and stowed my gun again under my arm. Behind me I heard the hatchway open and someone yelling, "Over there, by the rail."

    I got my arms around Carmen's waist and heaved her up. She screamed again and I pitched her over the rail into the darkness, and dove after her. The water stung when I hit the surface and then I was in it and went under maybe ten or fifteen feet before I was able to turn and start up. My wet clothes dragged me back, and the weight of the gun under my arm was no longer comforting. My lungs had already been abused once this evening and they didn't enjoy further abuse.

    At about the time I began to get the panicky feeling that I wouldn't make it to the surface, I did, and came back into the world in the ebony water and started looking for Carmen. I saw her twenty feet away, floundering. I swam toward her as someone on the yacht began to sweep the water with a flashlight. It must have been one of those long affairs with six batteries, because the beam was strong and the circle of light was large. I reached Carmen, who was giggling and crying and spluttering at the same time.

    The flashlight swept by us and started back and then Blondie was there in the skiff and reaching for Carmen. The light hit us and a shot splashed the water near the skiff and then from somewhere in the darkness south of us a chatter of shots sounded and bullets spanged off the hull of the yacht and the flashlight went out and someone yelled, "Get down!" Then Carmen was in, and I was, rolling in over the gunwales of the skiff without quite knowing how I had and Blondie was silently pulling in the direction of the gunfire.

    "I never thought I'd be glad to see you," I said to him.

    "Sure," he said.

    

    

    "I don't want to go home," Carmen said. She was sitting with a blanket wrapped around her in the tiny below-decks stateroom of Mars' cabin cruiser. We were heading for the landing pier in the very earliest gray hint of dawn. Simpson's yacht had too much draft to follow us in. It was under full power, running north around the point.

    I was there with my jacket off but the rest of me still soaking wet and Mars was looking fresh and comfortable as he leaned against the bulkhead.

    "I still say we should have gone in and finished it," Mars said.

    "Bad idea, Eddie. Simpson's got about a regiment with him whenever he travels. You'd have gotten wiped out."

    "I got some pretty good boys with me, soldier."

    "We came for Carmen," I said. "We've got her."

    "I don't want to go home," Carmen said.

    "It's not going to end here, soldier."

    "I know," I said. "We have assault charges, and kidnapping, illegal restraint, attempted murder, murder, probably two counts. We have a witness." I nodded toward Carmen.

    "Not much of a witness," Mars said. "You think you can make any of them stick against Simpson?"

    "If we ever get Simpson alone," I said, "in a quiet room, with maybe a couple of tough cops who know how it's done, he'll babble like a brook. It's Bonsentir that keeps him together."

    "You know any tough cops like that?" Mars said.

    "One or two," I said. "When we get ashore I'll call one."

    "Be a good thing," Mars said, "if you kinda leave me out of it. Cops would like to tag me anyway, and what we pulled off here may not be exactly one hundred percent legal."

    "I'll do what I can," I said. "I owe you that much."

    "You don't owe me a thing, soldier. I wasn't doing it for you."

    "I'll keep you out of it anyway."

    The cabin cruiser slowed to an idle and bumped gently broadside against the landing. It was early dawn and the sky was a lighter gray in the east. I collected Carmen and went ashore to find my car and find a phone and make a phone call.

    Which I did.

    

    

    We were in a brightly lighted clean gray room in the Coast Guard Station in Long Beach. Ohls was there smoking one of his toy cigars and looking as if he'd had a good breakfast. There was also a captain from the Long Beach police, who was tall and thin and had a big Adam's apple and the expression of a man who didn't like his job. Behind a neat gray government-issue desk was a Coast Guard lieutenant commander named Fenton, who had a red face and the upper body of a beer barrel. I sat on a straight chair in front of the commander. Carmen, dressed in a Coast Guard fatigue shirt and dungarees four sizes too big, looked like Mary Pickford on the chair beside me. Ohls was standing near the doorway, and the Long Beach police captain, whose name was Rackley, was leaning on the wall next to Fenton's desk.

    "We don't need her," Ohls said. "We brought Simpson into the Coast Guard brig and he wouldn't shut up. He told us about the Neville Valley water scheme. He told us about chopping up Lola Monforte and four or five others from all over the country. He told us that Dr. Bonsentir was with him in everything and was his, ah, 'mentor' I think he called him, and 'spiritual adviser.' "

    "Where's Bonsentir?" I said.

    Ohls looked at Fenton.

    "Had a Mexican with him," Fenton said. "Built like a gorilla. He put up a fight-trying to protect Bonsentir, I guess. I got a seaman in the hospital and another with a broken arm. The chief in charge of the detail had to shoot him dead."

    "And?"

    "And in the scuffle Bonsentir disappeared."

    "He'll turn up," Ohls said. "We cut off his juice anyway, with Simpson."

    "Can I see Randolph?" Carmen said.

    "Not right now," Ohls said. He looked at me. "We got your statement, Marlowe, and hers. And before Simpson stops talking we may get him for murdering Lincoln."

    I nodded. Carmen was working on her thumb again.

    "Wait a minute," Rackley said. His Adam's apple juggled up and down his thin neck. "Are you turning them loose?"

    "Yeah."

    "Long Beach might have something to say about that," Rackley said.

    "Long Beach would still be tripping over its own handcuffs, if Fenton here hadn't made a courtesy call," Ohls said. "Nothing going on here happened in Long Beach."

    "I resent the crack about the handcuffs," Rackley said.

    "I was kinda hoping you would," Ohls said. "You got any problems letting them walk?" He looked at Fenton.

    "We're going to need her, it comes to trial," Fenton said. "Him too."

    "Look," Ohls said patiently. "This guy goes out by himself onto a boat full of guys with big guns to rescue a nymphomaniac lulu that's sicker than two buzzards. He gets strangled and sapped and damn nears drowns and gets her out and brings her to us. He also solves a noisy dismemberment murder for us and prevents somebody from stealing a lifetime supply of water from some people up north."

    Ohls took a puff on his toy cigar and took it out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment.

    "For this he gets paid… how much you getting for this, Marlowe?"

    "A dollar, and expenses."

    "Tank of gas, maybe?"

    "And two bullets," I said.

    Ohls crossed his arms and stared at Rackley.

    "You think when it comes time to testify we ain't going to find him?"

    "The lieutenant has a point there," I said to Rackley.

    "You think nobody helped him get on and off that yacht?" Rackley said. "Coast Guard found twenty-eight bullet holes in the hull and superstructure."

    "I reload fast," I said.

    "Nobody in Long Beach probably knows this," Ohls said. "But most good cops know when to press and when to leave alone. I like this thing just the way Marlowe told it."

    Rackley got up.

    "Hell," he said. "Like you said there's no Long Beach jurisdiction here."

    He walked past me and Ohls and went out of the room and closed the door hard, but not too hard, behind him.

    "You got any problems, Commander?" Ohls said.

    "Let them walk," Fenton said.

    "The way I figure there won't be a trial anyway," I said. "Simpson's mushier than an old apple, and his lawyers will plead him insane and it will stick."

    We were on our feet now. I shook hands with Fenton.

    

    

    "Where we going?" Carmen said. "I'm very sleepy."

    "Home," I said. "Your maid will put you to bed."

    "Not you?" she said and her tongue showed between her lips and she gave me the slow vamp, looking at me with her head turned, from the corners of her eyes.

    "I'm sleepy too," I said. "I'll let the maid do it."

    My car was in the parking lot, next to the black one that belonged to the county, that Ohls drove.

    "Thanks, Bernie," I said.

    Ohls nodded and opened his car door and paused with one foot in, leaning on the top.

    "She's got to go away someplace too," he said.

    "I know."

    "One of us will see to it," he said. "I'd just as soon it be you. But one of us will have to."

    "I'll do it," I said.

    I opened my door and Carmen got in. I closed it after her and went around to the driver's side. Ohls was still halfway in his car, still leaning on the roof.

    "Bonsentir's going to come for you," Ohls said.

    "Yeah," I said.

    "Sooner or later," Ohls said.

    "Good," I said. "He'll think he went headfirst into a Mixmaster."

    Ohls nodded slowly and got in his car and started up and drove away. I watched him go. Then I got in beside Carmen, and cranked the engine, and started out toward Hollywood, with my eyes heavier than sorrow. And the rest of me no better.

    

    

    "So you did it," Vivian Regan said.

    I was sitting in her enormous living room in the middle of the morning with my feet up on a hassock. I put my head back against the big leather wing chair I was sitting in and let my eyes close. My clothes had dried on me and I looked like something that had washed up in a storm drain. I felt worse.

    "I was sure they'd kill you," Vivian said.

    "Wrong," I said.

    "Yes, I was. And I'm awfully glad I was."

    "Yeah."

    The stillness in the house seemed essential, part of the substance of the house, integrated with the floor joists and ceiling rafters, impregnating the plaster. Vivian sat with her legs tucked up under her on the vast overstuffed lavender silk couch across from me. She had on some sort of black silk lounging pajamas and a string of pearls, the kind you keep in the vault, and wear paste.

    "Will you help me with Carmen?" she said.

    "I'll find her a place and see that she is admitted and that she stays," I said.

    "Will she have to go to trial?"

    "I don't think so. I doubt there'll be a trial. I think this will all be discreetly arranged and she and Simpson will both be judged insane and put into custodial care."

    Vivian shivered and hugged herself.

    "Insane," she said. "It's such an awful word."

    I didn't say anything. Vivian stood and walked over and stood behind me and massaged my neck and shoulders.

    "What about us, Marlowe? We had something the other night."

    I nodded.

    "There'd be room here for you, you know."

    "For a while," I said.

    "You don't think it would last?"

    "You're scared now. You're alone. You've got Carmen to worry over again. You don't know where Bonsentir is. Someone like me looks pretty good now. But how would I look next year? How would I look at the polo matches? Do I get my own monogrammed blazer? Do I take elocution lessons so I can sound like a phony Englishman and fit in with the clubhouse crowd at Del Mar?"