TWENTY-FOUR

The house on Westmore Street was a small frame bungalow behind a larger house. There was no number visible on the smaller house, but the one in front showed a stencilled 1618 beside the door, with a dim light behind the stencil. A narrow concrete path led along under windows to the house at the back. It had a tiny porch with a single chair on it. I stepped up on the porch and rang the bell.

It buzzed not very far off. The front door was open behind the screen but there was no light. From the darkness a querulous voice said:

“What is it?”

I spoke into the darkness. “Mr. Talley in?”

The voice became flat and without tone. “Who wants him?”

“A friend.”

The woman sitting inside in the darkness made a vague sound in her throat which might have been amusement. Or she might just have been clearing her throat. “All right,” she said. “How much is this one?”

“It’s not a bill, Mrs. Talley. I suppose you are Mrs. Talley ?”

“Oh, go away and let me alone,” the voice said. “Mr. Talley isn’t here. He hasn’t been here. He won’t be here.”

I put my nose against the screen and tried to peer into the room. I could see the vague outlines of its furniture. From where the voice came from also showed the shape of a couch. A woman was lying on it. She seemed to be lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling. She was quite motionless.

“I’m sick,” the voice said. “I’ve had enough trouble. Go away and leave me be.”

I said: “I’ve just come from talking to the Graysons.”

There was a little silence, but no movement, then a sigh. “I never heard of them.”

I leaned against the frame of the screen door and looked back along the narrow walk to the street. There was a car across the way with parking lights burning. There were other cars along the block.

I said: “Yes, you have, Mrs. Talley. I’m working for them. They’re still in there pitching. How about you? Don’t you want something back?”

The voice said: “I want to be let alone.”

“I want information,” I said. “I’m going to get it. Quietly if I can. Loud, if it can’t be quiet.”

The voice said: “Another copper, eh?”

“You know I’m not a copper, Mrs. Talley. The Graysons wouldn’t talk to a copper. Call them up and ask them.”

“I never heard of them,” the voice said. “I don’t have a phone, if I knew them. Go away, copper. I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a month.”

“My name is Marlowe,” I said. “Philip Marlowe. I’m a private eye in Los Angeles, I’ve been talking to the Graysons. I’ve got something, but I want to talk to your husband.”

The woman on the couch let out a dim laugh which barely reached across the room. “You’ve got something,” she said. “That sounds familiar. My God it does! You’ve got something. George Talley had something too—once.”

“He can have it again,” I said, “if he plays his cards right.”

“If that’s what it takes,” she said, “you can scratch him off right now.”

I leaned against the doorframe and scratched my chin instead. Somebody back on the street had clicked a flashlight on. I didn’t know why. It went off again. It seemed to be near my car.

The pale blur of face on the couch moved and disappeared. Hair took its place. The woman had turned her face to the wall.

“I’m tired,” she said, her voice now muffled by talking at the wall. “I’m so damn tired. Beat it, mister. Be nice and go away.”

“Would a little money help any?”

“Can’t you smell the cigar smoke?”

I sniffed. I didn’t smell any cigar smoke. I said, “No.”

“They’ve been here. They were here two hours. God, I’m tired of it all. Go away.”

“Look, Mrs. Talley—”

She rolled on the couch and the blur of her face showed again. I could almost see her eyes, not quite.

“Look yourself,” she said. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I have nothing to tell you. I wouldn’t tell it, if I had. I live here, mister, if you call it living. Anyway it’s the nearest I can get to living. I want a little peace and quiet. Now you get out and leave me alone.”

“Let me in the house,” I said. “We can talk this over. I think I can show you—”

She rolled suddenly on the couch again and feet struck the floor. A tight anger came into her voice. “If you don’t get out,” she said, “I’m going to start yelling my head off. Right now. Now!”

“Okay,” I said quickly. “I’ll stick my card in the door. So you won’t forget my name. You might change your mind.”

I got the card out and wedged it into the crack of the screen door. I said: “Well goodnight, Mrs. Talley.”

No answer. Her eyes were looking across the room at me, faintly luminous in the dark. I went down off the porch and back along the narrow walk to the street.

Across the way a motor purled gently in the car with the parking lights on it. Motors purl gently in thousands of cars on thousands of streets, everywhere.

I got into the Chrysler and started it up.

TWENTY-FIVE

Westmore was a north and south street on the wrong side of town. I drove north. At the next corner I bumped over disused interurban tracks and on into a block of junk yards. Behind wooden fences the decomposing carcasses of old automobiles lay in grotesque designs, like a modern battlefield. Piles of rusted parts looked lumpy under the moon. Roof high piles, with alleys between them.

Headlights glowed in my rear view mirror. They got larger. I stepped on the gas and reached keys out of my pocket and unlocked the glove compartment. I took a .38 out and laid it on the car seat close to my leg.

Beyond the junk yards there was a brick field. The tall chimney of the kiln was smokeless, far off over waste land. Piles of dark bricks, a low wooden building with a sign on it, emptiness, no one moving, no light.

The car behind me gained. The low whine of a lightly touched siren growled through the night. The sound loafed over the fringes of a neglected golf course to the east, across the brickyard to the west. I speeded up a bit more, but it wasn’t any use. The car behind me came up fast and a huge red spotlight suddenly glared all over the road.

The car came up level and started to cut in. I stood the Chrysler on its nose, swung out behind the police car, and made a U-turn with half an inch to spare. I gunned the motor the other way. Behind me sounded the rough clashing of gears, the howl of an infuriated motor, and the red spotlight swept for what seemed miles over the brickyard.