Perchance to Dream

    Behind me I heard her call me a bastard. A lot of people had called me that. Could all of them be wrong?

CHAPTER 10

    There was no Randolph Simpson in the phone book. I went down to the library and looked in the collection of street directories. No listing. I went over to the hall of records and began digging through the real estate tax rolls, and after three very dusty hours I found him. Randolph Simpson, Sierra Verdugo Rd. I went back to my office and looked at my map. Sierra Verdugo Rd. was in the Santa Monica Mountains, west of Topanga Canyon and south of Mulholland. A guy that lived there and kept his name out of the city directory and had his phone number unlisted probably didn't welcome a visit from a stranger.

    I put on my hat and went to my car and drove right out to see him.

    Sierra Verdugo Rd. cut through the parched hills that people out here called mountains between the Pacific Coast Highway and the San Fernando Valley.

    They still shot Westerns out here, low-budget stuff with aging stars on tired horses, and as I wound through the narrow turns of the road I half expected to see a band of rampaging Indians round the bend. The hills were brown and barren except for the scrubby low growth of indeterminate species that clung to the otherwise eroding hillsides. Boulders the size of outhouses teetered near the rim of the highway, looking as if you could reach out as you drove by and push them over into the canyon. The road west off Topanga Canyon went slowly upward in a series of S turns until it widened into a graded turnaround in front of a large iron gate. The gate was set into a ten-foot fieldstone and mortar wall that circled slowly out of sight in both directions. The wall was topped with broken glass of many colors set sharply in the mortar. Beyond the gate was a plain of green grass highlighted with flower beds and flowering shrubs. In the middle of the sere hills it looked like a vision of Eden from the plains to the east.

    I parked my car near the gate and got out and walked to it. Beyond the gate was a small guard shack that looked like a miniature castle. A man came out and walked to the gate. He looked like a tough accountant. Dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, sunglasses.

    "What can I do for you?" he said. His hair was cut short and very neatly trimmed around the ears.

    "Looking for Randolph Simpson," I said.

    He smiled politely and nodded encouragingly.

    "I had the impression he lived here," I said.

    "Really," he said.

    "I wish to talk with him about Carmen Sternwood."

    "I'm afraid you've made a mistake, sir," he said.

    "Sure," I said. "I'd drive all the way up here without knowing that Simpson lived here. In fact I just drive around L. A. in my spare time knocking on doors at random and asking for Randolph Simpson."

    The gate guard smiled as politely as a tax collector, but not as warmly.

    "Mr. Simpson doesn't accept callers," he said.

    "He might make an exception for me," I said. "Call the house, check it out. Tell him it's Marlowe about Carmen Sternwood."

    The guard looked silently at me for a moment. Hard to be sure. I could be important, and it could be that turning me away without checking would get him in trouble. Maybe Carmen Sternwood was important. He made up his mind.

    "Wait here, please," he said, and went back into the little guard castle.

    He was gone maybe five minutes and when he came out another guard came with him. The other guard was dressed the same, including the sunglasses, but he was nearly bald and what hair he had left he'd plastered in wispy strips across the otherwise hairless skin of his head.

    "Step out of the car, please," the first guard said. "Place your hands on the roof."

    I did and the bald guard patted me down and took my gun from under my left arm.

    "Calling card?" he said.

    "You never know," I said. "I've heard they have jack-rabbits up here as big as bears. There's ID in my wallet."

    I was getting to that," the bald guard said.

    He looked at the photostat of my license in the glassine window of my wallet.

    "Private creeper," he said to his partner, "outta Hollywood."

    His partner nodded, looked at the wallet and passed it back to me.

    "Follow the drive," he said. "Don't stop the car. Don't get out. Somebody will meet you at the front door." He dropped my gun in the side pocket of his dark suit coat.

    "We'll hold the rod till you come down," he said. "So you don't hurt yourself."