24

"Where's Larry?" Angel said. She was small on the front seat beside me. The dashboard clock said 4:07.

"He's safe," I said.

"I can't wait to see him," she said.

"Can't," I said. "You'd lead the cops right to him."

"Where is he?" she said.

"It's better not to tell you," I said.

"I'm his wife, Mr. Marlowe." She turned in the seat toward me.

"That's why the cops are following you," I said.

"Following?"

"You think they just happened by?" I said. "They have a tail on you."

She turned in the seat and stared back at the headlights behind us.

"Following me?"

It was as if the last half hour hadn't happened.

"Yes, Ma'am," I said.

"Is he all right?" she said. She turned back from staring at the tail and tucked a leg up under herself and leaned an arm against the back of the seat. As she spoke she bent toward me a little.

"He's fine, Angel. He's safe. He misses you."

She nodded. "I miss him."

We were the only cars on the road as we drove toward Venice. The cops lounged along three or four car lengths behind us.

"Who are you?" Angel said.

"Marlowe," I said. "I'm a private detective on a case."

"Are you a friend of Larry's?"

"I just met him once before, the night we ran out on the cops."

"So why are you helping him?"

"Beats me," I said.

"That's no answer," she said. The cop headlights behind us lit most of the interior of my car. In the light her eyes were wide and dark and full of sweetness.

"You're right," I said. "I don't think he killed the woman, but he seems to me the kind of guy that might have a little trouble in his background. Not a tough guy, and not connected. The kind of guy the cops will nail. They'll try him at a night session in Bay City and have him sitting in Chino looking at twenty years to life without ever figuring out how he got there."

"Larry wouldn't kill anyone."

"No," I said. "I don't think so either. Are you married to him?"

Angel nodded. There was pride in that nod, and contentment, and something more, something protective, the way a young mother nods when you ask if that's her baby.

"Almost four years," she said.

"Ever hear of a guy named Les Valentine?" I said.

"No."

"Woman named Muriel Blackstone?"

"No."

We were on Wilshire and when it ran out against the Pacific we turned left and drove along the empty beachfront. The moonlight on the waves emphasized how empty the ocean was, and endless, rolling in from Zanzibar.

"Larry's in trouble, isn't he?"

"He's wanted for murder," I said.

"But he didn't do that. He's in some other kind of trouble," she said. "The kind that brought you to him."

In the moonlight the buildings looked stately, like Moorish castles, the peeling paint and crumbled stucco smoothed out.

"He is, isn't he, Mr. Marlowe?"

"There's a gambler named Lipshultz," I said. "Larry owes him money. He hired me to find him."

She nodded, a nod of confirmation.

"He's had trouble before, hasn't he?" I said.

"He's an artist, Mr. Marlowe. He's imaginative. Many people have said he's a genius with a camera."

"And?" I said.

"And he's impulsive, he's not good with rules. He feels something, he does it. He has an artistic temperament."

"So he bets hunches," I said.

"Yes."

"And they sometimes don't pay off."

"No, they don't. But he has to be free to follow his intuition, don't you see. To limit him is to stifle him."

"He ever been in other kinds of trouble?"

She was silent for a bit, looking out at the silver ocean rolling slowly toward us. On the beach below, above the tide line, some bums were sleeping, clutching their scraps of belongings.

"I think he's had some trouble with women."

"Like what?" I said.

"I don't know, he never said. I don't question him."

"Why not?" I said.

"I love him," she said. As if it answered all the questions.

"So what makes you think there was trouble with women?"

"There were phone calls for him from a woman, and when he hung up he was angry."

"Un huh."

"And…" She looked at her lap for a moment, where she had folded her hands. I waited, listening to the wheels murmur over the asphalt.

"And?" I said.

"And there was a picture, I saw."

I waited.

"It was a picture of a woman. She was undressed and posing…" She stared harder at her hands. If the light had been better I think I'd have seen her blushing.

"Suggestively?" I said.

"Yes." She said it so softly I could barely hear.

"And you didn't ask him about it?" I said.

"No. It was from the time in Larry's life before he met me. He had a right to that time. It had nothing to do with me."

"You trust him?"

"In the way you mean, yes. He loves me, too."

"He sure as hell ought to," I said.

We pulled up behind the house where she and Larry lived… when Larry wasn't living with his other wife in Poodle Springs. She got out her side and I got out mine and came around. The cops stopped a little ways behind us.

"I'll walk you to the door," I said.

"No need," she said. There was the lilt of anxiety in her voice.

"Just to see that you get in safe," I said. "I'm in love too, with my wife."

Angel smiled suddenly, like sunrise after a rainy night.

"That's lovely," she said. "Isn't it."

"Yes," I said.

We walked down the alley to her front door and she unlocked it and let herself in.

"Thanks," she said.

Then she closed the door. I heard the bolt slide, and turned and headed back to the Olds. When I got in and pulled away the cops blinked their lights once, and then shut them off and settled in to watch.