He offered me a drink. I said no thanks. I didn't sit down. When I left he thanked me some more, but not as if I had dimbed a mountain for him, nor as if it was nothing at all. He was a little shaky and a little shy but polite as hell. He stood in the open door until the automatic elevator came up and I got into it. Whatever he didn't have he had manners.
He hadn't mentioned the girl again, Also, he hadn't mentioned that he had no job and no prospects and that almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn't stick around long enough to make sure he didn't get tossed in the sneezer by some prowl car boys, or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot,
On the way down in the elevator I had an impulse to go back up and take the Scotch bottle away from him. But it wasn't any of my business and it ne.ver does any good anyway. They always find a way to get it if they have to have it.
I drove home chewing my lip. I'm supposed to be tough but there was something about the guy that got me. I didn't know what it was unless it was the white hair and the scarred face and the clear voice and the politeness. Maybe that was enough. There was no reason why I should ever see him again. He was just a lost dog, like the girl said.
2
It was the week after Thanksgiving when I saw him again. The stores along Hollywood Boulevard were already beginning to fill up with overpriced Christmas junk, and the daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible- it would be if you didn't get your Christmas shopping done early. It would be terrible anyway; it always is.
It was about three blocks from my office building that I saw a cop car double-parked and the two buttons in it staring at something over by a shop window on the sidewalk. The something was Terry Lennox-or what was left of him-and that little was not too attractive.
He was leaning against a store front. He had to lean against something. His shirt was dirty and open at the neck and partly outside his jacket and partly not. He hadn't shaved for four or five days. His nose was pinched. His skin was so pale that the long thin scars hardly showed. And his eyes were like holes poked in a snowbank. It was pretty obvious that the buttons in the prowl car were about ready to drop the hook on him, so I went over there fast and took hold of his arm.
"Straighten up and walk," I said, putting on the tough. I winked at him from the side. "Can you make it? Are you stinko?"
He looked me over vaguely and then smiled his little one-sided smile. "I have been," he breathed. "Right now I guess I'm just a little-empty."
"Okay, but make with the feet. You're halfway into the drunk tank already."
He made the effort and let me walk him through the sidewalk loafers to the edge of the curb. There was a taxi stand there and I yanked open the door.
"He goes first," the hackie said, jerking a thumb at the cab ahead. He swung his head around and saw Terry. "If at all," he added.
"This is an emergency. My friend is sick."
"Yeah," the hackle said. "He could get sick somewheres else."
"Five bucks," I said, "and let's see that beautiful smile."
"Oh well," he said, and stuck a magazine with a Martian on the cover behind his mirror. I reached in and got the door open. I got Terry Lennox in and the shadow of the prowl car blocked the far window. A gray-haired cop got out and came over. I went around the taxi and met him.
"Just a minute, Mac. What have we got here? Is the gentleman in the soiled laundry a real dose friend of yours?"
"Close enough for me to know he needs a friend, He's not drunk."
"For financial reasons, no doubt," the cop said. He, put his hand out and I put my license in it. He looked at it and handed it back. "Oh-oh," he said. "A P.I. picking up a client." His voice changed and got tough. "That tells a little something about you, Mr. Marlowe, What about him?"
"His name's Terry Lennox. He works in pictures."
"That's nice." He leaned into the, taxi and stared at Terry back in the corner. "I'd say he didn't work too lately. I'd say he didn't sleep indoors too lately. I'd even say he was a vag and so maybe we ought to take him in."
"Your arrest record can't be that low," I said. "Not in Hollywood."
He was still looking in at Terry. "What's your friend's name, buddy?"
"Philip Marlowe," Terry said slowly. "He lives on Yucca Avenue, Laurel Canyon."
The cop pulled his head out of the window space. He turned, and made a gesture with his hand. "You could of just told him."
"I could have, but I didn't."
He stared at me for a second or two. "I'll buy it this time," he said. "But get him off the street." He got into the police car and the police car went away.
I got into the taxi and we went the three-odd blocks to my parking lot and shifted Tto my car. I held out the five-spot to the hackie. He gave me a stiff look and shook his head.
"Just what's on. the meter, Jack, or an even buck if you feel like it. I been down and out myself. In Frisco. Nobody picked me up in no taxi- either. There's one stony-hearted town."
" San Francisco," I said mechanically.
"I call it Frisco," he said. "The hell with them minority groups. Thanks." He took the dollar and went away.
We went to a drive-in where they made hamburgers that didn't taste like something the dog wouldn't eat. I fed Terry Lennox a couple and a bottle of beer and drove him home. The steps were still tough on him but he grinned and panted and made the dimb. An hour later he was shaved and bathed and he looked human again. We sat down over a couple of very mild drinks.
"Lucky you remembered my name," I said.
"I made a point of it," he said. "I looked you up too. Could I do less?"
"So why not give me a ring? I live here all the time. I have an office as well."
"Why should I bother you?"
"Looks like you had to bother somebody. Looks like you don't have many friends."
"Oh I have friends," he said, "of a sort." He turned his glass on the table top. "Asking for help doesn't come easy-especially when it's all your own fault." He looked up with a tired smile. "Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?"
"It takes about three years."
"Three years?" He looked shocked.
"Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well."
"That wouldn't be much of a change," he said. He turned and looked at the dock. "I have a two-hundreddollar suitcase checked at the Hollywood bus station. If I could bail it out I could buy a cheap one and pawn the one that's checked for enough to get to Vegas on the bus. I can get a job there."
I didn't say anything. I just nodded and sat there nursing my drink.
"You're thinking that idea might have come to me a little sooner," he said quietly.
"I'm thihking there's something behind all this that's none of my business. Is the job for sure or just a hope?"
"It's for sure. Fellow I knew very well in the army runs a big dub there, the Terrapin Club. He's part racketeer, of course, they all are-but the other part is a nice guy."
"I can manage the bus fare and something over. But I'd just as soon it bought something that would stay bought for a while. Better talk to him on the phone."
"Thank you, but it's not necessary. Randy Starr won't let me down, He never has. And the suitcase will pawn for fifty dollars. I know from experience."
"Look," I said, "I'd put up what you need. I'm no big soft-hearted slob. So you take what's offered and be good. I want you out of my hair because I've got a feeling about you."
"Really?" He looked down into his glass. He was only sipping the stuff. "We've only met twice and you've been more than white to me both times. What sort of feeling?"