Browning PI Page 4

  'Didn't I tell you not to smoke in the car?'

  I almost choked on the lungful. I got the window down and exhaled. I dragged again, blew the smoke out and dropped the cigarette into the gutter.

  'Thanks,' Pete said. 'Nothing happened around back. I guess it was the same here?'

  I nodded. 'I need coffee, tobacco and alcohol.'

  'You're killing yourself, but it just so happens I've got a call to make at a place where there's a guy doing the same thing. You want to come along?'

  I shrugged. 'Why not.' It was that or home and I knew that if I went home I'd drink and smoke too much and do nothing but think of ivory-tinted skin and slanted green eyes.

  On the drive Pete added another detail. 'Why did the gorilla keep us waiting out in the hall?'

  'I don't know.'

  'To give them time to set up their story. The hell with it. We'll play along with them for a while. We've got no other leads, unless you've got something in mind.'

  I shook my head.

  'Didn't think so,' McVey said.

  'So where are we going now?'

  'Little something else I've got going on. Kinda weird. This guy's paying me a few bucks to talk to him.'

  'What about?'

  'Myself.'

  He filled me in then on a short piece of his history he hadn't told me about before. He'd joined the army straight after Pearl Harbour and had seen some action in the Pacific. He'd been blown up by a grenade, suffered a head wound and had a silver plate in his skull holding it together.

  'I get headaches,' he said. 'But I get a pension. So far it's a fair trade. In ten years' time I'll let you know. Anyway, I'm at the hospital a month ago, waiting to see a doc. Just routine. This guy's in the waiting room with me. Seems he brought his wife in for something or other. We get to talking. He tells me he was in the first war and got blown up. I tell him about the metal in my nut. I also tell him I'm a private detective. You never saw anyone so interested. Wants me to tell him all about it.'

  I yawned. It looked like there was going to be a boring old vets' reunion coming up. Given my army record, deserted from the first war, invalided out of the second (and I have to admit there was a certain amount of malingering involved there), it wasn't exactly my sort of thing. 'About what?'

  'About both. He wants to hear what it's like to have a plate in your head and how a private dick operates. Every time I go to see him he's got a list of questions. He pays me twenty bucks a session. That's useful dough.'

  'Yeah,' I said. 'What's he do, this guy?'

  'He's a writer. Name's Raymond Chandler. He writes a damn good book.'

  The name didn't mean anything to me and the only use I had for books was for putting under short table legs. I yawned again and wanted a smoke. We turned into Drexel Avenue, south of Hollywood, and Pete pulled up outside a small ordinary-looking house. Not the kind of place you expect a writer to have. In my experience, writers either live in a pigsty or a palace. We went up the path to the front porch, which was in need of some work. It wasn't a bad neighbourhood, close to the Jewish stronghold on Fairfax Avenue. No view but not too much traffic.

  Pete stabbed the buzzer. 'You'll like this guy if he's in a good mood.'

  'What if he's not?'

  'You'll hate him.'

  A shortish, stocky man wearing a cardigan and carrying a cat answered the door. 'McVey,' he said. 'Do come in.'

  We walked into a narrow hallway and along to a frowsy room with a lot of nondescript furniture and about a million books. McVey introduced us and I said, 'Glad to meet you.'

  Chandler put his finger to his lips. 'Could you drop your voice a little. My wife's not well. She's sleeping.'

  'Sorry.'

  'That's all right. Well, I'm glad of the company. Can I get you a drink? I'm afraid I only have gin.'

  'Gin's fine,' Pete said. 'Take a seat, Rich.'

  Chandler put the cat down carefully on a pile of books where it balanced nicely. He brushed his cardigan down and tugged at the loosened ends of his bow tie. Then he adjusted his spectacles. 'Right,' he said, 'gin it is.'

  McVey dropped into one of the big armchairs and I did the same. The room already smelled of tobacco smoke so I got out my Camels and added to the atmosphere. Pete chewed a match. Chandler came back carrying a tray with a gin bottle, some sliced limes, a bowl of ice, and three glasses on it. He had a pipe in his mouth and little wisps of smoke curled out as he spoke around the stem.

  'Out of tonic, darn it.' He set the tray down on a table and made three solid gins with ice and lime. 'Happy days,' he said.

  We all drank. I'd have been happier with whiskey but the gin was fine. I was glad he was out of tonic. Chandler sat back in his chair and took a tiny sip of his drink as if he intended to make it last a long time. He puffed his pipe and stared at the nearest bookshelf. 'I'm glad of the company,' he said. 'Writing's a lonely business.'

  He had a peculiar voice, not quite American but a long way short of British. He looked about sixty; there was a lot of grey in his hair and his skin was pale. He seemed not to know what to do with his hands. They sort of drooped from his wrists and he fiddled with his glass and pipe and matches constantly. He was a very nervous fellow. From time to time he got up and peeked through a door into one of the bedrooms. Chandler and Pete got into a random conversation about war and wounds and, as the tobacco fog built up in the room and we worked our way through the gin, I almost nodded off. The cat wandered about the room and eventually settled on a cushion next to Chandler on the divan.

  'Sleeping can be a problem,' I heard Pete say, 'but a few shots and an aspirin usually fixes it.'

  'I suppose you have to watch out for blows on the head?' Chandler said.

  'Yeah.' Pete laughed. 'But I'd watch out for that anyway. I been in this game a good few years and I never got hit on the head once. Not like the guy in your books.'

  Chandler smiled and rambled on about punctuation and dramatic necessity. Something about the tone of his voice cut through the alcohol and tobacco fog. I stared at him, tried to imagine him different—younger, in uniform maybe. And then it came to me. I remembered when I'd met him before.

  6

  It was in France in 1918. I was in the Australian army and living in fear. They'd made me a sniper because I was a good shot. I thought it'd be a soft spot but it wasn't. The life expectancy of a sniper in France was measured in days, if not hours. I did as little as I could and deserted when things got too hot. On the last day of my military service, I was taking part in a British offensive, along with some Canadians and Kiwis, near Cambrai, south of Valenciennes. The bombardment was awful and men were dying around me like flies. The air was alive with flying metal and I dropped into a big shell hole to get out of it for a while. This Canadian sergeant was lying wounded in the hole, half-submerged in the mud. God, the memory of it makes me want a drink. The hole was full of corpses, British, German, Australian, all kinds.

  Anyway, he told me his name—Ray Chandler—and that he was the only survivor of his platoon. They'd had a shell dropped on them or been blown up by a grenade, I forget which. He spoke with an English accent then and was thinner with more hair, but it was the same guy. He was interested to meet an Australian, but his manner was pretty high hat. I called a medic for him, I remember, and got the hell out of there. To stay in the one place9 for more than a couple of minutes was asking for it.

  Well, here we both were, in Hollywood, more than twenty years later and he was a writer and I was a detective, of sorts. Strange world. I took a closer look at him now and did some calculating. He couldn't have been sixty but he sure looked it, or even more. From the way he sipped his gin I guessed he'd gone a lot of rounds with the booze and had lost more than he'd won. At the moment he seemed to be holding his own. I didn't remind him of our meeting. It would have been too hard to account for my movements over the next few weeks and he looked like a shrewd old bird who could ask a good question. I just accepted some more gin and took a bit more interest in his co
nversation with Pete.

  They talked about Pete's skull and about the private enquiry game and some of the cases Pete had handled. Pete talked pretty well. He was more modest than I'd have been if I'd handled some of those jobs—getting a rich kid off one of the gambling boats anchored off Santa Monica, finding the runaway daughter of an oil tycoon and arresting a San Quentin escapee who'd busted out specifically to kill Pete's client.

  'My guy was as guilty as him, of course,' Pete said. 'But he'd had a better lawyer.'

  'Law is where you buy it,' Chandler said and Pete nodded. I put in my two cents' worth from time to time but neither of them seemed very interested. I could have told them about the movie star and the sixteen-year-old triplets but somehow I thought they wouldn't have gone for it. All that talk about violence and yet they were both, at heart, quiet, bookish men. Chandler tried hard to be friendly, but there was something snooty about him that he just couldn't help. Weird.

  'So, what's on your plate now, McVey?' Chandler said. He got himself another gin, only his third, but his voice was starting to slip a cog or two and it was a fair while since he'd looked in on his wife.

  'Missing writer,' Pete said. 'Kind of strange case, Ray. You want to hear about it?'

  'Night's young,' Chandler said.

  It wasn't all that young. I asked where the bathroom was. Chandler gave me vague directions and I wandered off in search of it. There were books everywhere and too much furniture, some of it pretty good stuff. It looked as if the Chandlers had once had a bigger house and more money. They were still talking when I got back. I looked at the bookshelves and saw a bit of Chandler's own stuff—The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window in hardcover editions—as well as stacks of magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective that carried some of his stories. It was hard to believe that this mild little guy could write about dames and death that way.

  'The Chinese angle is interesting,' Chandler was saying. 'What d'you make of that, Browning?'

  'Eh? Oh, nothing. I don't know. Beautiful woman. Is there much money in this writing game?'

  'No. The money's in the movies. I've got an agent who's trying to get me some work with the studios.'

  Don't do it, I thought, they'll eat you alive. 'Yeah. Hart Sallust seems to do all right. I think he's had a couple of Oscar nominations and that bumps up his price.'

  Chandler winced as if this kind of talk was painful to him. He'd get a bellyful of it if he went to work in Hollywood. He puffed on his pipe, then pointed the wet stem at Pete. 'What questions have you been asking?'

  Pete took out his notebook and rattled off a few things, like—why no blood on dress, why did the gorilla keep us waiting, why didn't they call the cops? How did she get back from Malibu? I was full of admiration, he was way ahead of me. But Chandler wasn't satisfied. He shook his head and poured himself another gin. He dropped in a slice of lime and watered it down with some of the melted ice.

  'No, no. That's not what I mean. You're not asking the right question.'

  'About what?' I said.

  'About Sallust. If a rich man gets snatched what are they after?'

  'His money,' I said.

  'Right.' The pipe stem jabbed at me. 'If a diplomat or a spy gets kidnapped what's the motive?'

  'Information,' Pete said.

  'Just so. Now Sallust's a writer. Anything that happens to him probably has to do with his work. What's he writing at the moment?'

  'I don't know,' Pete said.

  'Appears to be giving him trouble, from what you say. Now there seem to be more than enough interested parties. Find out what he's writing about and you might get some idea of what's going on.'

  Pete nodded. 'That's a great idea, Ray. Thanks.'

  Chandler nodded. 'Welcome. Gentlemen, I think it's time to call it a night. Keep me informed, won't you?'

  Pete said he would and accepted an envelope from Chandler as he showed us politely to the door.

  On the way back to the Wilcox, Pete was thoughtful. I'd run out of smokes so there was no danger of me stinking up the car, also no danger of being thoughtful. I let my mind play on May Lin's shape under the silk dress, which doesn't require what you'd call thinking.

  After a while Pete said, 'Strange bird, isn't he? Ray, I mean.'

  That made me a little impatient. Just because I was slumped in the seat with my head back looking at the roof didn't mean I'd lost the plot. 'I know who you mean. Yeah, he is.'

  'Do you know I've never seen his wife. She's always in bed. Wonder what's wrong with her?'

  'Maybe he murdered her two years ago and he's just keeping up appearances.'

  Pete glanced at me sharply. 'That ain't funny. Didn't take to him, uh?'

  I said, 'He was all right.' But the truth was I had my reservations. Maybe it was the dim memory of how he'd ordered me about in that muddy hellhole. Maybe something else. Chandler reminded me of certain types I'd known at school—monitors, prefects, prize-winners; they carried a certain air of superiority even if you had six inches and twenty pounds on them10 and were ordering them to fork over the pocket-money.

  Suddenly, McVey swung the wheel. The car turned sharply right and my hat fell off. 'Hey. What're you doing?'

  'We've got a tail,' Pete said. He drove carefully and smoothly, making occasional, natural-seeming turns until he was sure. I could see the lights in the rear-vision mirror and I was sure too. I wasn't worried; it would take a pretty good car to catch the finely-tuned Packard. I started to worry when I realised that Pete wasn't putting on the speed and he was heading for the canyons instead of the bright lights.

  'Lose him,' I said. 'You can do it.'

  'I don't wanna lose him. I wanna catch him.' Pete's voice lost its city smoothness when he got excited. In a shoot-out he probably snapped his braces and chewed tobacco.

  'You don't know how much gun they've got.'

  Pete patted the holster under his arm. I hadn't seen him put the gun back there, but people who're good with guns are like that. You never see the gun until it matters. 'I got enough,' he said. He grinned. 'Ray likes me to wear it.'

  I pressed back against the seat. Holy Christ, I thought, I'm in with one of those. He actually likes this stuff!

  We were almost to the foothills now and I was considering bailing out, but Pete chose that moment to increase speed.

  'Hang on!'

  We shot down a narrow, rutted road. Pete braked sharply and jumped out. I did the same in a pure reflex. 'What're we doing?'

  Pete had his gun out and was pushing through the mesquite scrub towards the edge of the road we'd left. 'This is a dead end a hundred yards down. He won't be able to turn that Chevvy. We've got 'em!'

  The moon was hidden by clouds and the night was pretty dark. No streetlights out there. I could see lights dotted around the canyons and hills where the people would be having their last sips of cognac before turning in. Smart people. I shoved my way up to the road and we began walking along in the fine white dust. I sneezed and Pete told me to shut up. I was sobering fast, the way I always have when danger is in the air.

  'How do you know he won't be able to turn it?'

  'Too narrow. Shut up and keep your eyes peeled. You got a gun?'

  I did have, somewhere in my apartment. I hadn't seen it for months. I grunted and followed him, keeping as much of my body as I could in the shadows cast by the mesquite. I suppose Pete had in mind getting the drop on the guy in the Chevvy and getting him to spill his guts. Well, the best laid plans . . . The road bent and dropped in front of us and suddenly a set of headlights was blazing in our eyes and there was the roar of an engine at full throttle. I threw myself sideways, bounced off a tree trunk and crumpled down into the prickles and spines and rocks. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pete's arm go up and I heard the sharp, snapping shots over the noise of the engine. Then all I could see was the night sky and all I could feel was cactus spikes in my butt.

  Away to my left I heard Pete cursing. I struggled up out of my prickly bed an
d tried a few groans myself.

  'You okay, Rich?'

  'Yeah,' I said. 'What was that about him not being able to turn the car?'

  McVey was up suddenly, rubbing his jaw. 'Goddamn branch got me.'

  'Lucky you didn't hit your head, what with that plate in it and all.'

  'Aw, I exaggerate that a bit for Ray. Well, I got one headlight. You see that?'

  'Are you kidding? I was jumping for my life. I suppose you saw the driver and got the licence plate.'

  'Missed the licence. There were two guys in the car. One of them looked like a Chink.'

  'How could you tell? Those lights were blinding.'

  'I was shading them to shoot. I saw him clear enough. Come on, I want to see how he did that. Some driver.'

  We tramped down the slope and around the bend. The moon sailed clear of a cloud. Fifty yards ahead where the road ended a house was being built. Hundreds of tons of rock fill had been trucked in to provide a surface. They were going to hang a house off the canyon side the way they were doing all over the foothills.

  'Goddamn it,' Pete said. 'I should've seen the marks of the trucks on the road. I'm losing my touch. At least I shot up that Chevvy some.'

  7

  At eleven o'clock the next morning things should have been a hell of a lot better. Pete McVey had gone off to search for a 1945 Chevrolet with bullet holes in it and I was driving towards Malibu with May Lin sitting next to me. She was wearing a red blouse with a high neck and a white sharkskin suit. Her hair was tied back with a scarf and she looked so good it was hard to keep my eyes on the road. It was a nice day too.

  'Down here,' May Lin said.

  I obeyed. I would have done anything she asked me, short of cutting my throat or giving up drinking. Maybe I'd even have given up drinking. The back road took us past some of the fancy beach houses to Paradise Cove, where the places ranged from clapboard shacks to brick villas. We pulled up behind a low, timber job that would have a beach frontage and just enough room between it and the houses on either side for you to squeeze past if you happened to be built like a breadstick. May Lin opened the door and stepped out of the car.