I opened the car door and leaned on it. She didn’t seem to have moved, either. It was hard to see any expression on her face. Hard to see anything but her eyes and chin, but not hard to smell the sandalwood.
«That perfume,» I said, «would drive a deacon nuts… no pearls.»
«Well, thanks for trying,» she said in a low, soft vibrant voice. «I guess I can stand it. Shall I… Do we… Or… ?»
«You go on home now,» I said. «And whatever happens you never saw me before. Whatever happens. Just as you may never see me again.»
«I’d hate that.»
«Good luck, Lola.» I shut the car door and stepped back.
The lights blazed on, the motor turned over. Against the wind at the corner the big coupe made a slow contemptuous turn and was gone. I stood there by the vacant space at the curb where it had been.
It was quite dark there now. Windows, had become blanks in the apartment where the radio sounded. I stood looking at the back of a Packard cabriolet which seemed to be brand new. I had seen it before — before I went upstairs, in the same place, in front of Lola’s car. Parked, dark, silent, with a blue sticker pasted to the right-hand corner of the shiny windshield.
And in my. mind I was looking at something else, a set of brand-new car keys in a keytainer stamped: «The Packard House,» upstairs, in a dead man’s pocket.
I went up to the front of the cabriolet and put a small pocket flash on the blue slip. It was the same dealer all right. Written in ink below his name and slogan was a name and address — Eugenie Kolchenko, 5315 Arvieda Street, West Los Angeles.
It was crazy. I went back up to Apartment 31, jimmied the door as I had done before, stepped in behind the wall bed and took the keytainer from the trousers pocket of the neat brown dangling corpse. I was back down on the street beside the cabriolet in five minutes. The keys fitted.
FIVE
It was a small house, near a canyon rim out beyond Sawtelle, with a circle of writhing eucalyptus trees in front of it. Beyond that, on the other side of the street, one of those parties was going on where they come out and smash bottles on the sidewalk with a whoop like Yale making a touchdown against Princeton.
There was a wire fence at my number and some rose trees, and a flagged walk and a garage that was wide open and had no car in it. There was no car in front of the house either. I rang the bell. There was a long wait, then the door opened rather suddenly.
I wasn’t the man she had been expecting. I could see it in her glittering kohl-rimmed eyes. Then I couldn’t see anything in them. She just stood and looked at me, a long, lean, hungry brunette, with rouged cheekbones, thick black hair parted in the middle, a mouth made for three-decker sandwiches, coraland-gold pajamas, sandals — and gilded toenails. Under her ear lobes a couple of miniature temple bells gonged lightly in the breeze. She made a slow disdainful motion with a cigarette in a holder as long as a baseball bat.
«We-el, what ees it, little man? You want sometheeng? You are lost from the bee-ootiful party across the street, hem?»
«Ha-ha,» I said. «Quite a party, isn’t it? No, I just brought your car home. Lost it, didn’t you?»
Across the street somebody had delirium tremens in the front yard and a mixed quartet tore what was left of the night into small strips and did what they could to make the strips miserable. While this was going on the exotic brunette didn’t move more than one eyelash.
She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t even pretty, but she looked as if things would happen where she was.
«You have said what?» she got out, at last, in a voice as silky as a burnt crust of toast.
«Your car.» I pointed over my shoulder and kept my eyes on her. She was the type that uses a knife.
The long cigarette holder dropped very slowly to her side and the cigarette fell out of it. I stamped it out, and that put me in the hall. She backed away from me and I shut the door.
The hall was like the long hall of a railroad flat. Lamps glowed pinkly in iron brackets. There was a bead curtain at the end, a tiger skin on the floor. The place went with her.
«You’re Miss Kolchenko?» I asked, not getting any more action.
«Ye-es. I am Mees Kolchenko. What the ’ell you want?»
She was looking at me now as if I had come to wash the windows, but at an inconvenient time.
I got a card out with my left hand, held it out to her. She read it in my hand, moving her head just enough. «A detective?» she breathed.
«Yeah.»
She said something in a spitting language. Then in English: «Come in! Thees damn wind dry up my skeen like so much teesue paper.»
«We’re in,» I said. «I just shut the door. Snap out of it, Nazimova. Who was he? The little guy?»
Beyond the bead curtain a man coughed. She jumped as if she had been stuck with an oyster fork. Then she tried to smile. It wasn’t very successful.
«A reward,» she said softly. «You weel wait ’ere? Ten dollars it is fair to pay, no?»
«No,» I said.
I reached a finger towards her slowly and added: «He’s dead.»
She jumped about three feet and let out a yell.
A chair creaked harshly. Feet pounded beyond the bead curtain, a large hand plunged into view and snatched it aside, and a big hard-looking blond man was with us. He had a purple robe over his pajamas, his right hand held something in his robe pocket. He stood quite still as soon as he was through the curtain, his feet planted solidly, his jaw out, his colorless eyes like gray ice. He looked like a man who would be hard to take out on an off-tackle play.
«What’s the matter, honey?» He had a solid, burring voice, with just the right sappy tone to belong to a guy who would go for a woman with gilded toenails.
«I came about Miss Kolchenko’s car,» I said.
«Well, you could take your hat off,» he said. «Just for a light workout.»
I took it off and apologized.
«O.K.,» he said, and kept his right hand shoved down hard in the purple pocket. «So you came about Miss Kolchenko’s car. Take it from there.»
I pushed past the woman and went closer to him. She shrank back against the wall and flattened her palms against it. Camille in a high-school play. The long holder lay empty at her toes.
When I was six feet from the big man he said easily: «I can hear you from there. Just take it easy. I’ve got a gun in this pocket and I’ve had to learn to use one. Now about the car?»
«The man who borrowed it couldn’t bring it,» I said, and pushed the card I was still holding towards his face. He barely glanced at it. He looked back at me.
«So what?» he said.
«Are you always this tough?» I asked. «Or only when you have your pajamas on?»
«So why couldn’t he bring it himself?» he asked. «And skip the mushy talk.»
The dark woman made a stuffed sound at my elbow.
«It’s all right, honeybunch,» the man said. «I’ll handle this. Go on.»
She slid past both of us and flicked through the bead curtain.
I waited a little while. The big man didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t look any more bothered than a toad in the sun.
«He couldn’t bring it because somebody bumped him off,» I said. «Let’s see you handle that.»
«Yeah?» he said. «Did you bring him with you to prove it?»
«No,» I said. «But if you put your tie and crush hat on, I’ll take you down and show you.»
«Who the hell did you say you were, now?»
«I didn’t say. I thought maybe you could read.» I held the card at him some more.
«Oh, that’s right,» he said. «Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. Well, well. So I should go with you to look at who, why?»
«Maybe he stole the car,» I said.