"Or?"

"There ain't no 'or' with Mr. Blackstone, Marlowe."

"So you want me to find the guy who stuck you."

Lipshultz nodded.

"I find people, Lipshultz, I don't shake them down."

"That's all I'm asking you, Marlowe. I'm out a hundred grand. I don't get it back and I'm dead. You find the guy. Talk to him."

"What if he doesn't have it? Guys that lose a hundred g's at the tables don't usually have it for long," I said.

"He's got it. His wife's worth twenty, thirty million."

"So why not ask her?"

"I have, she don't believe me. She says her Lester wouldn't do that. And I say ask Lester, and she says he's away now, doing stills for some movie shooting north of L.A."

"How come you didn't shake her down?"

Lipshultz shook his head. "She's a lady," he said.

"And you're a gentleman," I said.

Lipshultz shrugged. "What the hell," he said.

I believed that like I believed you should draw to an inside straight, but there didn't seem to be anything for me in arguing about it.

"I'll pay you ten percent if you get the money," Lipshultz said.

"I get a hundred dollars a day and expenses," I said.

Lipshultz nodded. "Heard you was a boy scout."

"There's some people doing twenty to life in San Quentin thought the same thing," I said.

Lipshultz grinned. "Heard you thought you was tough, too."

"Where do I find this guy?" I said.

"Valentine, Les Valentine. Lives with his wife somewhere in Poodle Springs, out near the Racquet Club. Want me to look it up?"

"I'm a trained sleuth," I said. "I'll look it up. Can I keep the IOU?"

"Sure," Lipshultz said. "I got copies."

Lipshultz gave me $100 as a retainer and pushed a button somewhere because Leonard and his alter ego showed up. Leonard gave me back my gun, alter ego stayed far enough away so I wouldn't bite him and followed me out through the gambling layout and into the hot bright daylight at the front door. He and Leonard watched while I got into the Olds and drove away with the hot wind washing over me through the open windows.

6

Les Valentine's house was off Racquet Club Road, on one of those curvy little streets created to make an instant neighborhood. There were giant cactus plants at regular intervals, and jacaranda trees for a touch of color. The bungalows with their wide roofs were set close to the drive so that there was room for the pool in back, and the patio, which represented the ultimate advancement of civilization in the desert. No one was in sight. The only movement was the soft sluice of water sprinklers. Everybody was probably inside trying on outfits for the party at the Racquet Club Saturday night.

I parked the Olds in front and walked up the crushed white stone path to the porch. On either side of the Spanish oak door there were bull's-eye glass panels which went with the Spanish architecture like a Scotch Margarita. A Japanese houseboy opened the door and took my hat and put me in the front parlor to sit while he went for Madame.

The room was all white stucco. In one corner was a conical stucco fireplace in case the temperature dropped below ninety after the sun went down. The hearth was red Mexican tile. On the front wall was a large oil painting of a mean-looking guy in a three-piece suit with big white eyebrows, and the mouth of a man who tips people a nickel. On the end wall, to the left of the fireplace, was a series of photographs, full of arty lighting from below and odd over-the-shoulder poses of women. Black and white stuff, framed expensively as if they were important. On an easel near the doors to the patio was a big blow-up of a man and a woman. She was in her mid-30s, serious-looking, with the same kind of mouth as the mean-looking old guy in the oil on the front wall. Even though he was balding, the man with her seemed younger. He wore rimless glasses in the picture and a smile that said, Don't pay attention to me.

"Mr. Marlowe?"

I turned to look at the woman from the picture. She was frowning down at the brand-new card I'd had printed up. I hadn't even had an office yet when I ordered them so they merely said Philip Marlowe, Investigation, Poodle Springs. Linda had vetoed the brass knuckles rampant.

"Yes, Ma'am," I said.

"Sit down, please," she said. "Have you been admiring my husband's work?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Is that your husband with you here?" I nodded at the picture.

"Yes, that's Les. He set the timer and then joined me. He's very clever."

The body belied the face. The face with its penurious mouth said, I won't give you a damned thing. The body with strong breasts and proud hips said, You can have anything you can take. I was newly married to an angel, but I could feel the challenge.

"That's my father in the painting," she said.

I smiled.

"You may smoke, if you wish," she said. "I do not, my father never approved, but Les does and I rather enjoy the smell."

"Thanks," I said. "Maybe in a while."

I crossed my legs.

"I'm trying to locate your husband, Mrs. Valentine."

"Really?"

"Yes, I've been employed to find him by a man who claims your husband owes him $100,000."

"That's ridiculous."

"My employer says that your husband ran up $100,000 in gambling debts at his, ah, casino and left him holding lOU's for the amount."

"lOU's for illegal gambling are not enforceable," she snapped.

"Yes, Ma'am. But it has put my client in a difficult position with his employer."

"Mr. Marlowe, this is no doubt of interest to someone. But surely not to me, or to anyone who knows my husband. My husband does not gamble. Nor does he give people lOU's. He pays for what he buys. He does not need to do otherwise. He makes a good living, and I am the fortunate recipient of my father's considerable generosity."

"Could you tell me where your husband is now, Ma'am? Perhaps if I talked with him I could clear this up."

"Les is on location in San Benedict with a film company. He is doing publicity photographs. Studios often employ him for that sort of thing. He is a very accomplished and well-regarded photographer of young women."

She liked the young women part the way a cow likes beefsteak.

"I see that," I said. "Which studio is he working for?"

Mrs. Valentine shrugged, as if the question were negligible. "I don't keep track," she said.

When she wasn't speaking she kept her lips slightly apart and her tongue moved restlessly in her mouth. "And I am certainly not going to have him beset with some wild accusations from a man known to be a criminal."

"I didn't say who my employer was," I said.

"I know who it is, it's that Mr. Lipshultz. He approached me directly and I let him know then what I thought of his cock-and-bull story."

I took Lippy's IOU out of my inside pocket and held it up for her to see.

She shook her head angrily. "He showed me that, too," she said. "I don't believe it. It's not Les's signature."

I got up and walked to one of the artsy framed photographs on the wall. In the lower right corner they were signed Les Valentine in the same innocuous cramped little hand that I had on the IOU. I held the IOU signature beside the photo signature. I held the pose for a minute with my eyebrows raised.

She stared at the two signatures as if she'd never seen either one. Her tongue darted about in her mouth. She was breathing a little harder than she had been.

She rose suddenly and walked to the bleached oak sideboard under her father's picture.

"I will have a drink, Mr. Marlowe. Would you care to join me?"

"No, Ma'am," I said, "but I'll smoke my cigarette now, I think."

I shook one loose and lipped it out of the pack. I lit it and drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly through my nose. Mrs. Valentine poured herself some kind of green liquor and sipped it two or three quick times before she turned back to me.