Perchance to Dream Read online

  ***

  I sipped my coffee. Norris took a discreet drink of his brandy. There was no sound in the big kitchen. The General's ghost was with us, and both of us were quiet in its presence.

  ***

  "What do you know about my family?"

  "I'm told you are a widower and have two young daughters, both pretty and both wild. One of them has been married three times, the last time to an ex-bootlegger who went in the trade by the name of Rusty Regan. That's all I heard, General…"

  ***

  "I'm afraid Miss Carmen has disappeared," Norris said, interrupting my thoughts.

  "From where?" I said.

  "After that, ah, misfortune with Rusty Regan," Norris said, "Miss Vivian placed her in a sanitarium as, I believe, you advised her to."

  I nodded. The coffee was strong and too hot to drink except in small sips. The brandy lay atop the coffee and made a different kind of warmth when I sipped it. I could hear the General's voice thin with age, taut with feeling long denied.

  ***

  "Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart, and quite ruthless. Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies. Neither of them has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither have I…"

  There was another sound in the voice. Besides the tiredness and the iron self-control, there was a wistful sound, a sound of what might have been, a sound of sins revisited but irredeemable. And it was that sound which held me, as I knew it held Norris, if only in memory, long after the speaker had fallen silent.

  "Vivian went to good schools of the snob type and to college. Carmen went to half a dozen schools of greater and greater liberality, and ended up where she started. I presume they both had, and still have, all the usual vices. If I sound a little sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it is because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, then opened them again suddenly. "I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets…"

  ***

  "She was doing very well at the sanitarium," Norris said. "I myself had the privilege of visiting her every week."

  "And Vivian?" I said. The daughters' names seemed to dispel the father's ghost.

  "Miss Vivian visited whenever she was, ah, able." Norris turned the cup slowly in his clean strong hands. "Her father's death was difficult for her. And she is still seeing Mr. Mars."

  Norris's voice was careful when he said it, empty of any evaluation. The voice of the perfect servant, not thinking, merely recording.

  "How nice for her," I said. "Did she tell you to call me?"

  "No, sir. I took that liberty. Miss Vivian feels that Mr. Mars will find Miss Carmen and return her to the sanitarium."

  "His price will be higher than mine," I said.

  "Exactly so, sir."

  "And you know what I charge?"

  "Yes, sir. You'll recall that I handled the General's checkbook for him when he employed you previously."

  "And you can afford me?"

  "The General was very generous to me in his will, sir."

  I took a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly and tilted my chair on its back legs.

  "But still you're working here," I said.

  "I believe the General would have wished that, sir. His daughters…" Norris let the rest of the sentence disappear into an eloquent servant's self-effacement.

  "Yes," I said. "I'm sure he would have. When did Carmen disappear?"

  "A week ago. I went on my weekly visit and found that she was gone. The staff was somewhat reticent about her disappearance, but I was able to ascertain that she had in fact been gone for at least two nights."

  "And no one had reported it?"

  "Apparently not, sir. I informed Miss Vivian Sternwood, of course, and took the liberty of speaking on the telephone with Captain Gregory of the Missing Persons Bureau."

  "And?" I said.

  "And it was, as I remember his words, 'the first I'd heard of it.' "

  "And Vivian?" I said.

  "Miss Vivian said that I was not to worry about it. That she had resources and that Carmen would turn up."

  "And by 'resources' you understood her to mean Eddie Mars?" I said.

  "I did, sir."

  "How does she feel about you calling me?" I said.

  "I have not yet informed her of that, sir."

  I drank the rest of the coffee laced with brandy. It had cooled enough to go down softly. I nodded more to myself than to Norris.

  "What is the name of this sanitarium?" I said.

  "Resthaven, sir. It is supervised by a Dr. Bonsentir."

  "Okay," I said, "I'll take a run out there."

  "Yes, sir," Norris said. "Thank you very much, sir. May I give you a retainer?"

  "A dollar will do for now," I said. "Make it official. We'll talk about the rest of it later."

  "That's very kind indeed, sir," Norris said. He took a long pale leather wallet out of his inside pocket and extracted a dollar bill and gave it to me. I wrote him out a receipt, took the bill, and put it in my pocket, negligently, like there were many more in there and I had no need to think about it.

  "May I call you here?" I said.

  "Indeed, sir. I often receive calls here. Answering the phone is normally among my duties."

  "And how is Vivian?" I said.

  "She is still very beautiful, sir, if I may be so bold."

  "And still dating a loonigan," I said.

  "If you mean Mr. Mars, sir, I'm afraid that is the case."

  CHAPTER 2

  I came out of the Sternwood house and stood on the front stoop with my hat in my hand, holding it by the brim against my right thigh. Below me, many terraced levels down the hill, was the big spiked fence that separated the Sternwoods, or what was left of them, from the people who still worked for a living. The sun glinted off the gilt spear points of the fence. To the north it shone on the snow in the San Gabriel Mountains. I looked back down the lawn the other way, at the few creaking oil derricks still tiredly pumping five or six barrels a day. It was hard to see them from here, and impossible to see beyond them to the stinking sump where Rusty Regan lay dreamless, sleeping the big sleep.

  Behind me the door opened.

  "Marlowe?"

  I turned and looked at Vivian Regan, the General's older daughter, the one with the hot eyes and the sulky mouth and the great legs. She was in some kind of white silk lounging outfit today; a bell-sleeved silk top with a plunging neckline and wide floppy silk pants that hid the great legs but hinted to you that if you got a look they would indeed be great. She had an unlighted cigarette in her mouth.

  "Got a match?" she said and leaned a little toward me through the open door.

  I dug out a kitchen match and snapped it on my thumbnail and lit her cigarette.

  "Still a masterful brute, aren't you," she said.

  I didn't want to say I wasn't, so I let it drift with the aimless current of Sternwood life.

  "Still sitting in the window," I said, "peeking through the curtains?"

  "I live here, Marlowe, or had you forgotten? I like to know who's going in and out."

  "I came in a while ago," I said. "Now I'm going out."

  Vivian stepped through the door and closed it behind her. She took in some smoke and held it a long time and then let it trail out slowly as she stared down at the distant line of derricks.

  "A walk down memory lane, Mr. Marlowe? Or perhaps you came courting and lost your nerve?"

  I shook my head.

  "Still the strong silent type, aren't you?"

  I grinned at her and nodded and put my hat on with the brim tipped forward over my forehead. I moved off the front step and began to move along down the slope toward my car. Vivian came along with me. I could feel the tension in her. Her movements were jagged with it.

  "You talked with Eddie Mars," she said.

  "Sure, after the Regan thing. I said I would."

  "How'd
he take it?"

  "You know I talked with him," I said. "You probably know how he took it."

  "You told him to stay away from me, and from Carmen. You said my father was never to know and if he found out, you, personally, would find a way to put Eddie upstate for a long time."

  "Just making small talk," I said. "I hope I didn't upset him."

  "Eddie Mars? It would take more than a cut-rate gumshoe to scare Eddie Mars."

  "I charge full rates," I said. "And your father died without knowing."

  "Yes," she said. "He did."

  The tight planes of her face softened for a moment. She put her hand on my arm as we walked along the brick pathway toward the gate.

  "I'm grateful for that, Marlowe."

  I said, "Uh huh."

  We were almost at the gate. I had parked my car under a pepper tree on the street, the same way I had the first time, that October when I'd come to call with the look of hard rain in the foothills, because Bernie Ohls, the DA's chief investigator, had told me that General Sternwood needed a gumshoe.

  "Why are you here, Marlowe?"

  "I came to call on your butler," I said.

  "Without consulting me?"

  "This is southern California, Mrs. Regan, in the twentieth century. Servants are now employees, not slaves. I know you don't like that, but you'll have to face it sooner or later."

  She tried to slap me, but I got a forearm up between my face and her hand.

  "Bastard," she said.

  "How's Carmen?" I said.

  "Fine," Vivian said.

  "I doubt that," I said. "She wasn't fine the last time I saw her, when she tried to put five bullets in me like she did Regan."

  "I did what you said, you know that. I took her away. We went to Switzerland, she took some treatments."

  "And now you're back," I said. "And where's Carmen?"

  "In a sanitarium," Vivian said.

  "Resthaven?"

  Vivian gave me a sharp look. The skin seemed to be stretched too tight over her cheekbones.

  "What has Norris told you?" she said.

  "Privileged communication," I said. "What are you doing to find her?"

  "That bastard," Vivian said. "He told you, didn't he?"

  "She shouldn't be running around loose," I said.

  "She's all right. I've got people looking for her."

  "Mars?" I said.

  "Eddie has promised to find her. She's probably just run off with some man. You know how Carmen is."

  Vivian was as casually unconcerned as a butterfly on a tulip.

  "She met this guy she must have run off with at a party at the sanitarium?"

  "Don't be sarcastic, darling. It's so trite. They have sheltered social activity at the sanitarium. Dr. Bonsentir is very progressive."

  "I'll bet he is," I said. "How did you find him?"

  "He came highly recommended," Vivian said.

  "By who?" I said. "Eddie Mars?"

  "Damn you, Marlowe, why are you so down on Eddie? Since Father died he has been a good friend."

  "Mars is a gambler, a thug, a murderer by proxy, a thief, probably a pimp. If he's a good friend to anyone it's Eddie Mars, anyone else is just raw material," I said.

  Vivian dropped the cigarette I'd lit for her and ground it into the brick walk with the toe of a pink slipper. She looked up at me and her eyes had the hot look I remembered. The look was probably part of the Sternwood blood and made for heroism at its best and debauchery on a gaudy scale at its worst.

  "I'm sick of you, Marlowe. I'm sick of your face. I'm sick of you in my life. I'm sick of you preaching at me, and moralizing, and acting like you were something better than I am, when all you are is a second-rate shoofly with a lousy office in a crummy section of town and two suits of clothes. I could buy fifty of you and use you around the house for bookends."

  She turned and stamped back up the brick walk, looking for a door to slam. She didn't find one until she reached the house, and when she did she went inside and slammed it.

  A hummingbird hovered in frantic suspension over a flowering azalea near the gate.

  "Probably doesn't have enough books," I said to the hummingbird.

  He paid no attention to me. I shrugged and went out and got in my car and headed back toward my lousy office, in the crummy part of town.

  CHAPTER 3

  The first time I had met Vivian Regan I had come to see her father, who wanted me to take a blackmailer off his back. She was still married to Rusty Regan who, it was said, used to command a brigade in the Irish Republican Army. But Rusty had disappeared, and the General missed him. I thought at the time, and still think, that the General hired me to make sure the blackmailer wasn't Rusty Regan. If it had been, which it wasn't, it would have broken his heart. When I left the General that day with my shirt sticking to my back and the sweat soaking my collar, Norris told me that Mrs. Regan wanted to see me.

  I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim with enough melodic line for a tone poem. She was tall and rangy and strong looking. Her head was against an ivory satin cushion. Her hair was black and wiry and parted in the middle and she had the hot black eyes of the portrait in the hall. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full…

  She had wanted to know if her father had hired me to find Rusty Regan. Since she hadn't hired me it was none of her business. I wouldn't tell her. She didn't like that.

  She flushed. Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don 't like your manners."

  "I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind you ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a scotch bottle. I don't mind you showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don Y mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

  She slammed her glass down so hard it slopped over on an ivory cushion. She swung her legs to the floor and stood up with her eyes sparking fire and her nostrils wide. Her mouth was open and her bright teeth glared at me. Her knuckles were white. "People don't talk like that to me," she said thickly.

  I sat and grinned at her. Very slowly she closed her mouth and looked down at the spilled liquor. She sat down on the edge of the chaise longue and cupped her chin in one hand.

  "My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you…"

  The rain had come hard that day, and it would come again another day. But today, thinking about Vivian, I drove in hot sunlight back toward Hollywood.

  There had always been that between us, the harsh edge of wilfulness, grating against the insistent push of desire. It had obsessed us then, and I could feel it now, the push and pull of it between us.

  The blackmailing wasn't much, some uncollectable IOUs to a man named Geiger. I could have cleaned that up in an afternoon if I could have gotten to Geiger. But I couldn't until it was too late, and then it was really too late.

  On a sort of low dais at one end of the room was a high-backed teakwood chair in which Miss Carmen Sternwood was sitting on a fringed orange shawl She was sitting very straight, with her hands on the arms of the chair, her knees close together, her body stiffly erect in the pose of an Egyptian goddess, her chin level, her small white teeth shining between her parted lips. Her eyes were wide open. The dark slate color of the iris had devoured the pupil They were mad eyes. She seemed to be unconscious. She looked as if in her mind, she was doing something very important and making a fine job of it. Out
of her mouth came a tinny chuckling noise, which didn't fit her expression or even move her lips.

  She was wearing a pair of long jade earrings. They were nice earrings and had probably cost a couple of hundred dollars. She wasn't wearing anything else…

  I stopped looking at her and looked at Geiger. He was on his back on the floor, beyond the fringe of the Chinese rug, in front of a thing that looked like a totem pole. It had a profile like an eagle and in its wide round eye was a camera lens. The lens was aimed at the naked girl in the chair. There was a blackened flash bulb clipped to the side of the totem pole. Geiger was wearing Chinese slippers with thick felt soles, and his legs were in black satin pajamas and the upper part of him wore a Chinese embroidered coat, the front of which was mostly blood. His glass eye shone brightly up at me and was by far the most lifelike thing about him. At a glance none of the three shots I heard had missed. He was very dead…

  A lot of people had died since then. And here we were, the survivors, circling still in some sort of aimless ritual around little Carmen. The thought made me need a drink and when I got to my office I sat alone at my desk and had one. It didn't do any good. On the other hand it did no great harm either.

  CHAPTER 4

  Resthaven sprawled in a small canyon that ran laterally off of Coldwater Canyon, just below Mulholland Drive. Some movie magnate had built it once in the late twenties, probably with the first big wad of pre-income tax money that he'd made filming two-reelers in Topanga Canyon. It might have been a ranch if you could picture a ranch built to specification for a Middle European peddler who'd struck it rich. It had a main building made of peeled redwood logs, squared and notched and fitted as snug as wallpaper. There was the bunkhouse, a longer lower echo of the main house, and there were three or four outbuildings which followed the same motif.

  Like most of southern California, the land, if left to its own devices, would have been dry and ugly. But it hadn't been left to its own devices. It had been watered and planted and pruned and fertilized and a profusion of flowering shrubs splashed across the green lawn and flanked the crushed shell driveway that curved up to the main entrance. There was no one in sight. And only a discreet sign burned into a polished square of redwood said RESTHAVEN. I parked under a big old eucalyptus tree that the wind had tortured into a posture of contorted abandon, and crunched across the driveway to ring the bell.