Perchance to Dream

    "Just because of that," Gregory said. "I know it shouldn't be that way, and you know it shouldn't be that way, but you and I both been around too long to think it won't be that way here in the good old USA."

    "Even though I have reason to believe that there's a missing girl there, maybe a kidnap victim?"

    "You got the word of one wappy old dame in a sanitarium who spends her time reading stuff would make me blush."

    "And Mrs. Rudnick's denial that she'd ever heard of the Sternwoods?"

    "Maybe she hasn't. Maybe she doesn't know everyone her boss knows. Maybe Vivian knows him and he don't know her. Just because she knows him don't mean he's got her sister."

    "Be a pretty fair-sized coincidence," I said. "The old lady in Resthaven tells me Carmen's with a guy named Simpson, and Vivian knows a guy named Simpson."

    "Sure," Gregory said. "I don't like coincidence either. In the cop business you learn to doubt it. But it happens. And even if you and me and the mayor all saw her there, you still don't get a search warrant in this county to go through Randolph Simpson's house."

    "He buy a piece of you too, Captain?" I said.

    Gregory shifted comfortably in his chair and fumbled in his coat for pipe and tobacco.

    "Sure," he said. "I'm just a dumb crooked copper. Everybody buys me. I got it coming in in grocery sacks. Which is why I'm driving a ten-year-old heap and living in a house too small and take the old lady out, maybe once a month, for an enchilada and a small beer."

    "Forget I said that," I said.

    "I try and stay reasonably honest, Marlowe. And I try to do my job. But I got a kid to put through college and I got retirement pay to think about. I do what I can."

    "Sure," I said.

    "You're not going to leave this alone, are you, Marlowe?"

    "It's how I make my living, Captain. People hire me to do stuff that the cops don't or won't do. It doesn't help my career to leave things unfinished. All I got to sell is that I'll stick to something, that I'll take it to the end, you know?"

    Gregory nodded. He had the pipe filled and was lighting it as carefully as he always did everything. As if it were the most important thing he would do that day, maybe ever.

    "Where I can help you, son, I will. But don't look for much."

    "I never have, Captain."

    Gregory nodded again, and took in a lot of pipe smoke and let it out in a slow reflective cloud that hung in the air between us. He put up a thick hand and waved it gently to dispel the smoke.

    "You got any next of kin?" he said.

    "No," I said. "Anything you care to tell me about Simpson except how rich he is?"

    "Nope," Gregory said. "You know more than you ought to now."

    "Thanks for the encouragement, Captain. I hope you enjoy your pension."

    "Hit the road, Marlowe," Gregory said. "I'm tired of talking with you."

    "Sorry to disturb your nap," I said and turned and left the office.

    Outside the heat shimmered up off the pavement like a mirage. The tar on the streets was soft from it. I drove back out Sunset to Hollywood with the top down and the hot wind in my face.

CHAPTER 12

    It was hot. I had the window open in my office but all that did was let me know that it was just as hot outside. The heat made everything still. There was little traffic on the boulevard, and what people there were walked slowly and stayed in the hot shade whenever they could find any. The sky was cloudless and bluer than cornflowers. I had my coat and vest off, and every little while I'd go to the sink in the corner and rinse my face and neck with tepid water from the tap.

    It was the kind of heat where families begin to eye each other's throats, where mousy accountants turn savagely on their boss, where irritation turns to anger and anger turns to murder, and murder turns into rampage.

    The phone rang. It was Bernie Ohls, the DA's chief investigator.

    "Got a murder off Beverly Glen," he said. "Near Stone Canyon Reservoir. Thought you might want to ride out with me and take a look."

    "Better than sitting here in a slow oven," I said.

***

    I was outside on the corner of Cahuenga when Ohls came by ten minutes later. He didn't seem in a hurry. He didn't hit the siren as we rolled down the boulevard west, toward Beverly Glen.

    Ohls was a medium-sized guy, blondish hair, stiff white eyebrows. He had nice even teeth and calm eyes and looked like most other medium-sized guys, except that I knew he had killed at least nine men, three when somebody thought he'd been covered. He was smoking a little cigar.

    "Found several pieces of a woman, in a gully off the Glen, down maybe a hundred yards from the road. There wasn't much blood and there were several parts missing, so it looks like she was dismembered somewhere else and dumped there." Ohls puffed a bit of smoke and the hot air swirled it out the open window. "Since not all of her is there, we figure she was probably dumped elsewhere too."

    I felt the pull of gravity at the bottom of my stomach.

    "You ID'd her yet?" I said.

    "Not really," Ohls said. "Her head's missing and both hands."

    We slid down Fairfax and onto Sunset.