Perchance to Dream

    I got back in my car and cranked the starter. The big gates swung slowly back and I drove slowly through them. Inside it was greener and brighter than a movie star's dreams. There were fountains and flowers in profusion and the grass under the steady arc of the sprinklers gleamed like the top of a pool table under the unwavering southern California sun. The drive was done in some kind of crushed shell, and curved, white and still, through the intense landscape until it reached the main building. The place looked like a Moorish fortress in a pale gray stucco with turrets on the corners and gunports every few feet across the top.

    Another guy in a dark suit and hard face opened the door for me and turned me over to a Chinese houseman who led me through a series of darkly paneled rooms to a long room with a gas fire in the oversized, tile-inlaid fireplace. In a huge oak chair with elaborately carved arms a woman sat, with her hands folded in her lap. She had steel-gray hair, and eyes to match.

    "I'm Jean Rudnick," she said. "Kindly tell me the purpose of your visit."

    She was wearing a mannish gray suit with a pinstripe, and a white shirt and a little gray and white striped tie. Her nails were painted lavender, and her gold-rimmed glasses enlarged her eyes so that they dominated her face.

    "My name is Philip Marlowe," I said. "I'm a private detective and I've been hired to find Carmen Sternwood, who is missing from a sanitarium in Beverly Hills."

    "And why do you wish to see Mr. Simpson?" she said.

    "I have information that Carmen's here."

    "From whom?"

    I shook my head. "Sorry," I said.

    "Mr. Marlowe," she said and her voice was full of the tiredness and superiority that people's voices get full of when they have too much power and wield it much too often, "I don't know if you know who I am, but I am Mr. Simpson's personal assistant and if someone is making ludicrous charges involving some girl and Mr. Simpson, then I must insist on knowing who that person is."

    "How'd you know Carmen is a girl?" I said.

    "I beg your pardon?"

    "You said charges involving Mr. Simpson and some girl. Why do you think it's a girl? There's lots of men named Carmen. Carmen Lombardo, Carmen Cavallaro, Carmen…"

    "Mr. Marlowe, please, I have no time for cheap parlor games."

    "Then don't play them with me, Miss Rudnick."

    "Mrs."

    "My congratulations to Mr.," I said.

    "Mr. Rudnick is deceased," she said. "Are you actually aware of who Mr. Simpson is?"

    "Looking around," I said, "I'd guess he was Ali Baba."

    "My God-how stupid can you be. You are entirely over your head and you haven't any idea. You really don't know."

    "Yeah," I said. "Sometimes I weep softly into my pillow just thinking about it. How about Simpson, do I see him?"

    "Certainly not," Mrs. Rudnick said. The thought seemed to cause her chest pains.

    "Does Simpson know anyone named Sternwood?" I said.

    "He certainly does not," Mrs. Rudnick said.

    Throughout our conversation she sat perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap, like a picture of Queen Victoria.

    "Maybe he knows them and hasn't told you," I said.

    That seemed to give her more chest pains.

    "Mr. Marlowe," she said, "I am Mr. Simpson's personal assistant! I have the pleasure of his full confidence. If he knew anyone named Sternwood, I too would know of it."

    "Vivian Sternwood knows him," I said.

    "Mr. Marlowe, I'm afraid this conversation is at an end."

    She picked up a small brass bell on the side table and jingled it discreetly.

    The door behind me opened and two of the suits came through it.

    "I want you to pay attention to me," Mrs. Rudnick said, "and not dismiss what I tell you simply because I am a woman. If you persist in annoying Mr. Simpson on this, or any matter, you will regret it for whatever is left of your life."

    "I'm not dismissing it because you're a woman, Mrs. Rudnick," I said. "I'm dismissing it because it doesn't scare me. The boys in the dark suits don't scare me. Randolph Simpson, whoever the hell he is, doesn't scare me. And if you think I've been annoying so far, wait until I shift into third."

    "You've been warned, Mr. Marlowe," Jean Rudnick said coldly. Her hands were still folded in her lap and her steely eyes never blinked as she watched me leave.

    The two suits walked me to rny car and stood looking at me blankly as I got in.

    I started up and let out the clutch and started down the driveway. As I left, I thought, for a moment, that I saw something stir in a second-floor window, a face for only a moment, then nothing. I drove on down the curving roadway and out through the ornate iron gate that closed silently behind me.

CHAPTER 11

    Captain Gregory gazed sadly at me across his desk and slowly shook his head.

    "You got a better chance of getting a search warrant for the White House," Gregory said. "I told you Bonsentir was wired. Simpson's who he's wired to."

    "Just because he's got a hundred million dollars?"