Perchance to Dream

    That taken care of, I went down on the boulevard and sat at a counter and had some late lunch. Never-at-a-loss Marlowe, the hungry detective. After lunch I strolled back up the boulevard toward my office. The movie executives were coming out of Musso & Frank's, telling each other how much they loved each other's last picture. The tourists walked along the sidewalk, heads down, staring at the stars in the pavement. If a real star had happened by they'd have never seen him. Near the Chinese theater a group of tourists stood and looked at the footprints in the concrete and listened to some sort of guide telling them about it. Outside the Roosevelt Hotel the prostitutes waited. They'd come from Keokuk and Great Falls, planning to start as starlets and become stars. It hadn't worked out. Some had started maybe as starlets, but they'd ended up as whores and as the afternoon began to wane, with its promise of evening, they gathered with the desperation in their eyes. Hollywood the town of sex and money and hokum for the tourists. A town where guys like Bonsentir could make a handsome living without a license, without any trace in the medical board records, without any interference from the buttons. Hooray.

    Having been told by everyone but Daisy Duck to butt out, and having earned a total of one dollar on the case so far, the smart thing to do would have been to go back to the office and have another couple of pulls at my bottle of rye and think long thoughts about how glamorous it was to be in Hollywood. That being the smart thing to do, I got in my car and drove down to Las Olindas to see Eddie Mars. Which is how smart I am.

    The Cypress Club was half hidden by a grove of wind-twisted cypress trees, which is probably why they called it the Cypress Club. It had once been a hotel and before that a rich man's house. It still looked like a rich man's house, grown a little shabby, and tarnished a bit by the beach fog that hung over it much of the time.

    There was no doorman when I arrived, too early. The big double doors that separated the main room from the entry foyer were open. Inside there was only a barman setting up for the evening, and a Filipino in a white coat dry-mopping the old parquet floor. From somewhere in the dimness to my right a pasty-faced blond man appeared. He was slim and there was no expression in his face. I remembered him from when I first saw him in Arthur Gwynne Geiger's house with the smell of ether still in the air, and blood still on the rug.

    If he remembered me he didn't show it.

    "Place is closed for another couple of hours, bub."

    "I know," I said. "I'm here to see Eddie."

    "He know you're coming?"

    "No."

    "Then you probably aren't going to see him."

    "It's the movies," I said. "All you hard guys think you have to act like some ham you saw in the movies. But he doesn't act that way because he's tough. He acts that way because he can't act. Go tell Eddie I'm here."

    He gave me the same tough-guy blank stare and turned and disappeared back into the gloom to the right. Pretty soon he came and said, "This way."

    His expression hadn't changed. Nothing had changed. He acted like he didn't care about me. Maybe he wasn't acting.

    Eddie Mars was still gray. Fine gray hair, gray eyes, neat gray eyebrows. His double-breasted flannel suit was gray, and his shirt was a lighter gray and his tie a darker gray except for two red diamonds in it. He had a hand in his coat pocket with the thumb out, the nail perfectly manicured, gleaming in the light from the big old bay window that looked out at the sea. The room was paneled, with a fabric frieze above the paneling. A wood fire burned in the deep stone fireplace and the smell of the woodsmoke mingled softly with the smell of the cold ocean. The time-lock safe was still in the corner. The Sevres tea set still sat on its tray. It didn't look like it had been used any more than it had the last time I was here.

    Mars grinned at me sociably. "Nice to see you again, soldier," he said.

    "That's not what everybody else says."

    Mars raised his even gray eyebrows. His face was tanned, and smooth-shaven, and healthy looking.

    "People can be cruel," he said. "Any special reason they're talking to you that way?"

    "I keep asking them where Carmen Sternwood is," I said.

    Mars' face darkened. The smile stayed but it seemed less sociable.

    "It's that kind of a visit, is it?" Mars said.

    "Of course it is," I said. "Why would I come calling on you socially?"

    "I thought we got along, Marlowe."

    "You're a thug, Eddie. You look like a good polo player, and you've got a lot of money, and you know a lot of rich folks. But behind it you're a thug, and you've got goons like Blondie there to follow you around with a rod."

    "And what's that to you?" Mars said. "Supposing what you say is true. What the hell are you? You're packing a rod, right now, under your left arm. You bend the law. You did it on Rusty Regan's death. The difference between me and you, soldier, is I make money and you don't."