Playback
A Philip Marlowe Novel
Raymond Chandler
Playback
Copyright 1958 by Raymond Chandler.
All rights reserved.
1
THE VOICE ON THE TELEPHONE seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn’t hear too well what it said—partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down. I fumbled it around and grunted.
“Did you hear me? I said I was Clyde Umney, the lawyer.”
“Clyde Umney, the lawyer. I thought we had several of them.”
“You’re Marlowe, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I guess so.” I looked at my wristwatch. It was 6:30 A.M., not my best hour.
“Don’t get fresh with me, young man.”
“Sorry, Mr. Umney. But I’m not a young man. I’m old, tired and full of no coffee. What can I do for you, sir?”
“I want you to meet the Super Chief at eight o’clock, identify a girl among the passengers, follow her until she checks in somewhere, and then report to me. Is that clear?”
“No.”
“Why not?” he snapped.
“I don’t know enough to be sure I could accept the case.”
“I’m Clyde Um—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted. “I might get hysterical. Just tell me the basic facts. Perhaps another investigator would suit you better. I never was an FBI man.”
“Oh. My secretary, Miss Vermilyea, will be at your office in half an hour. She will have the necessary information for you. She is very efficient. I hope you are.”
“I’m more efficient when I’ve had breakfast. Have her come here, would you?”
“Where is here?”
I gave him the address of my place on Yucca Avenue, and told him how she would find it.
“Very well,” he said grudgingly, “but I want one thing very clear. The girl is not to know she is being followed. This is very important. I am acting for a very influential firm of Washington attorneys. Miss Vermilyea will advance you some expense money and pay you a retainer of two hundred and fifty dollars. I expect a high degree of efficiency. And let’s not waste time talking.”
“I’ll do the best I can, Mr. Umney.”
He hung up. I struggled out of bed, showered, shaved and was nuzzling my third cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.
“I’m Miss Vermilyea, Mr. Umney’s secretary,” she said in a rather chintzy voice.
“Please come in.”
She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. She had a pair of legs—so far as I could determine—that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted.
“Christian Dior,” she said, reading my rather open mind. “I never wear anything else. A light, please.”
“You’re wearing a lot more today,” I said, snapping a lighter for her.
“I don’t greatly care for passes this early in the morning.”
“What time would suit you, Miss Vermilyea?”
She smiled rather acidly, inventoried her handbag and tossed me a manila envelope. “I think you’ll find everything you need in this.”
“Well—not quite everything.”
“Get on with it, you goof. I’ve heard all about you. Why do you think Mr. Umney chose you? He didn’t. I did. And stop looking at my legs.”
I opened the envelope. It contained another sealed envelope and two checks made out to me. One, for $250, was marked “Retainer, as an advance against fees for professional services.” The other was for $200 and was marked “Advance to Philip Marlowe for necessary expenses.”
“You will account for the expenses to me, in exact detail,” Miss Vermilyea said. “And buy your own drinks.”
The other envelope I didn’t open—not yet. “What makes Umney think I’ll take a case I know nothing about?”
“You’ll take it. You’re not asked to do anything wrong. You have my word for that.”
“What else do I have?”
“Oh, we might discuss that over a drink some rainy evening, when I’m not too busy.”
“You’ve sold me.”
I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one.
“Turn it over,” Miss Vermilyea said.
On the back there was clearly typed material.
“Name: Eleanor King. Height five feet four inches. Age about 29. Hair dark reddish brown, thick, with a natural wave. Erect carriage, low distinct voice, well dressed but not overdressed. Conservative make-up. No visible scars. Characteristic mannerisms: habit of moving her eyes without moving her head when entering a room. Scratches palm of right hand when tense. Left-handed but adept in concealing it. Plays fast tennis, swims and dives beautifully, holds her liquor. No convictions, but prints on file.”
“Been in the coop,” I said, looking up at Miss Vermilyea.
“I have no information beyond what is there. Just follow your instructions.”
“No name, Miss Vermilyea. At twenty-nine a dish like this would almost certainly have been married. There’s no mention of a wedding ring or any other jewels. That makes me wonder.”
She glanced at her watch. “Better do your wondering at the Union Station. You haven’t much time.” She stood up. I helped her on with her white raincoat and opened the door.
“You came in your own car?”
“Yes.” She went halfway out and turned. “There’s one thing I like about you. You don’t paw. And you have nice manners—in a way.”
“It’s a rotten technique—to paw.”
“And there’s one thing I don’t like about you. Guess what it is.”
“Sorry. No idea—except that some people hate me for being alive.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
I followed her down the steps and opened her car door for her. It was a cheap job, a Fleetwood Cadillac. She nodded briefly and slid down the hill.
I went back up and loaded a few things into an overnight bag, just in case.
2
There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket. She wasn’t carrying anything but a paperback which she dumped in the first trash can she came to. She sat down and looked at the floor. An unhappy girl, if ever I saw one. After a while she got up and went to the bookrack. She left it without picking anything out, glanced at the big clock on the wall and shut herself in a telephone booth. She talked to someone after putting a handful of silver into the slot. Her expression didn’t change at all. She hung up and went to the magazine rack, picked up a New Yorker, looked at her watch again, and sat down to read.
She was wearing a midnight blue tailor-made suit with a white blouse showing at the neck and a big sapphire blue lapel pin which would probably have matched her earrings, if I could see her ears. Her hair was a dusky red. She looked like her photograph, but a little taller than I expected. Her dark blue ribbon hat had a short veil hanging from it. She was wearing gloves.
After a while she moved across the arches outside of which the taxis wait. She looked left at the coffee shop, turned and went into the main waiting room, glanced at the drugstore and newsstand, the information booth, and the people sitting on the clean wooden benches. Some of the ticket windows were open, some not. She wasn’t interested in them. She sat down again and looked up at the big clock. She pulled off her right glove and set her wristwatch, a small plain platinum toy without jewels. Mentally I put Miss Vermilyea beside her. She didn’t look soft or prissy or prudish, but she made the Vermilyea look like a pick-up.