"Chandler, Raymond- Playback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chandler Raymond)

"Girl friend got a home somewhere?"
"A long way from here."
He knocked ash from his cigarette by flicking his little finger at it still in his mouth.
"Could be she planned it that way. Could be she don't want you to know where she went. Could be you were lucky at that. They can drop the arm on you for shacking up in a hotel in this town. I'll admit it has to be pretty flagrant."
"Could be I'm a liar," I said, and got a business card out of my wallet. He read it and handed it back.
"Better," he said. "Some better. But it's against the company rules. I'm not driving this hack just to build muscle."
"A five interest you? Or is that against the rules too?"
"My old man owns the company. He'd be pretty sore if I was on the chisel. Not that I don't like money."
The phone on the wall jangled. He slid out of the cab and went over to it in about three long strides. I just stood planted, gnawing my lip. He talked and came back and stepped into the cab and was sitting behind the wheel all in one motion.
"Have to blow," he said. "Sorry. I'm kind of behind schedule. Just got back from Del Mar, the seven forty-seven to L.A. makes a flag stop there. Most people from here go that way."
He started his motor and leaned out of the cab to drop his cigarette in the street.
I said, "Thanks."
"For what?" He backed out and was gone.
I looked at my watch again. Time and distance checked. It was all of twelve miles to Del Mar. It would take almost an hour to ferry someone to Del Mar and drop him or her off at the railroad station and turn around and come back. He had told me in his own way. There was no point in telling me at all unless it meant something.
I watched him out of sight and then crossed the street to the booths outside the telephone company's office. I left the booth door open and dropped my dime and dialed the big 0.
"I'd like to make a collect call to West Los Angeles, please." I gave her a Bradshaw number. "Person to person, Mr. Clyde Umney. My name is Marlowe and I'm calling from Esmeralda 4-2673, a pay phone."
She got him a lot quicker than it took me to tell her all that. He came on sharp and quick.
"Marlowe? It's about time you reported in. Well-- let's have it."
"I'm in San Diego. I've lost her. She slipped away while I was taking a nap."
"I just knew I'd picked a smart cookie," he said unpleasantly.
"It's not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Umney. I have a rough idea where she went."
"Rough ideas are not good enough for me. When I hire a man I expect him to deliver exactly what I order. And just what do you mean by a rough idea?"
"Would it be possible for you to give me some notion of what this is all about, Mr. Umney? I grabbed it off kind of quick on account of meeting the train. Your secretary gave me a lot of personality but very little information. You want me to be happy in my work, don't you, Mr. Umney?"
"I gathered that Miss Vermilyea told you all there is to know," he grumbled. "I am acting at the request of an important law firm in Washington. Their client desires to remain anonymous for the present. All you have to do is trace this party to a stopping place, and by stopping place I do not mean a rest room or a hamburger stand. I mean a hotel, apartment house, or perhaps the home of someone she knows. That's all. How much simpler do you want it?"
"I'm not asking for simplicity, Mr. Umney. I'm asking for background material. Who the girl is, where she came from, what she's supposed to have done to make this job necessary."
"Necessary?" he yapped at me. "Who the hell are you to decide what is necessary? Find that girl, pin her down, and phone me her address. And if you expect to be paid, you better do it damn quick. I'll give you until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. After that I'll make other arrangements."
"Okay, Mr. Unmey."
"Where are you exactly and what is your telephone number?"
"I'm just kind of wandering around. I got hit on the head with a whiskey bottle."
"Well, that's too bad," he said acidly. "I presume you had already emptied the bottle."
"Oh it might have been worse, Mr. Umney. It might have been your head. I'll call you around ten A.M. at your office. Don't worry about anybody losing anybody. There's two other guys working the same side of the street. One's a local boy named Mitchell and the other is a Kansas City shamus name of Goble. He carries a gun. Well good night, Mr. Umney."
"Hold it!" he roared. "Wait a minute! What does that mean--two other operatives?"
"You asking me what it means? I'm the guy that asked you. Looks like you only got a piece of the job."
"Hold it! Hold it right there!" There was a silence. Then in a steady voice that didn't bluster any more: "I'll call Washington the first thing in the morning, Marlowe. Excuse me if I sounded off. It begins to look as though I am entitled to a little more information about this project."
"Yeah."
"If you make contact again, call me here. At any hour. Any hour at all."
"Yeah."
"Good night, then." He hung up.
I put the phone back on the hook and took a deep breath. My head still ached but the dizziness was gone. I breathed in the cool night air laced with sea fog. I pushed out of the booth and looked across the street. The old guy who had been in the taxi slot when I arrived was back again. I strolled across and asked him how to get to The Glass Room, which was where Mitchell had promised to take Miss Betty Mayfield to dinner--whether she liked it or not. He told me, I thanked him, recrossed the empty street and climbed into my rented car, and started back the way I had come.
It was still possible that Miss Mayfield had grabbed the 7.47 for Los Angeles or some way station. It was a lot more likely that she had not. A cabdriver taking a fare to the station doesn't stick around to watch the fare get on the train. Larry Mitchell wouldn't be that easy to shake. If he had enough on her to make her come to Esmeralda, he had enough on her to keep her there. He knew who I was and what I was doing. He didn't know why, because I didn't know myself. If he had half a brain, and I gave him credit for a good deal more, he would have to assume I could trace her movements as far as a taxi took her. The first guess I was working on was that he would have driven to Del Mar, parked his big Buick somewhere in the shadows, and waited for her taxi to drive up and unload. When it turned around and started back, he would pick her up and drive her back to Esmeralda. The second guess I was working on was that she wouldn't tell him anything he didn't already know. I was a Los Angeles private eye, unknown parties had hired me to follow her, I had done so and then made the mistake of trying to get too close. That would bother him because it suggested he didn't have the field to himself. But if his information, whatever it was, came from a press clipping, he could hardly expect to have it to himself forever. Anybody with enough interest and enough patience could turn it up in time. Anybody with enough reason to hire a private dick probably knew it already. And that in turn meant that whatever kind of bite he planned to put on Betty Mayfield, financial or amatory or both, would have to be put on fast.
A third of a mile down the canyon a small illuminated sign with an arrow pointing seaward said in script _The Glass Room_. The road wound down between cliffside houses with warm lights in the windows, manicured gardens, stucco walls and one or two of fieldstone or brick inset with tiles in the Mexican tradition.
I drove down the last curve of the last hill and the smell of raw seaweed filled my nostrils and the fog-veiled lights of The Glass Room swelled to amber brightness and the sound of dance music drifted across the paved parking lot. I parked with the sea growling out of sight almost at my feet. There was no attendant. You just locked your car and went in.
A couple of dozen cars, no more. I looked them over. One hunch at least had paid off. The Buick Roadmaster solid top bore a license number I had in my pocket. It was parked almost at the entrance and next to it in the very last space near the entrance was a pale green and ivory Cadillac convertible with oyster-white leather seats, a plaid traveling rug thrown over the front seat to keep it dry, and all the gadgets a dealer could think of, including two enormous spotlights with mirrors on them, a radio aerial almost long enough for a tuna boat, a folding chromium luggage rack to help out the boot if you wanted to travel far and in style, a sun visor, a prism reflector to pick up traffic lights obscured by the visor, a radio with enough knobs on it for a control panel, a cigarette lighter into which you dropped your cigarette and it smoked it for you, and various other trifles which made me wonder how long it would be before they installed radar, sound-recording equipment, a bar, and an anti-aircraft battery.
All this I saw by the light of a clip-on flash. I moved it to the license holder and the name was Clark Brandon, Hotel Casa del Poniente, Esmeralda, California.


8

The entrance lobby was on a balcony which looked down over the bar and a dining room on two levels. A curving carpeted staircase led down to the bar. Nobody was upstairs but the hat-check girl and an elderly party in a phone booth whose expression suggested that nobody better fool with him.
I went down the stairs to the bar and tucked myself in a small curved space that commanded a view of the dance floor. One side of the building was an enormous glass window. Outside of it was nothing but fog, but on a clear night with a moon low over the water it would have been sensational. A three-piece Mexican band was making the kind of music a Mexican band always makes. Whatever they play, it all sounds the same. They always sing the same song, and it always has nice open vowels and a drawn out sugary lilt, and the guy who sings it always strums on a guitar and has a lot to say about _amor, mi corazon_, a lady who is "linda" but very hard to convince, and he always has too long and too oily hair and when he isn't making with the love stuff he looks as if his knife work in an alley would be efficient and economical.