attack on the way to church

attack on the way to church

In Pasadena, where the stuffy millionaires holed up after Beverly Hills was spoiled for them by the movie crowd, the city fathers screamed with rage. Everything was the fault of the smog. If the canary wouldn't sing, if the milkman was late, if the Pekinese had fleas, if an old coot in a starched collar had a heart' , that was the smog. Where I lived it was usually clear in the early morning and nearly always at night. Once in a while a whole day would be clear, nobody quite knew why. It was on a day like that—it happened to be a Thursday—that Roger Wade called me up. "How are you? This is Wade." He sounded fine. "Fine, and you?" "Sober, I'm afraid. Scratching a hard buck. We ought to have a talk. And I think I owe you some dough." "Nope." "Well, how about lunch today? Could you make it here somewhere around one?" "I guess so. How's Candy?" "Candy?" He sounded puzzled. He must have blacked out plenty that night. "Oh, he helped you put me to bed that night." "Yeah. He's a helpful little guy—in spots. And Mrs. Wade?" "She's fine too. She's in town shopping today." We hung up and I sat and rocked in my swivel chair. I ought to have asked him how the book was going. Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question. I had another call in a little while, a strange voice. "This is Roy Ashterfelt. George Peters told me to call you up, Marlowe." "Oh yes, thanks.

You're the fellow that knew Terry Lennox in New York. Called himself Marston then." "That's right. He was sure on the sauce. But it's the same guy all right. You couldn't very well mistake him. Out here I saw him in Chasen's Air Conditionerone night with his wife. I was with a client. The client knew them. Can't tell you the client's name, I'm afraid." "I understand. It's not very important now, I guess. What was his first name?" "Wait a minute while I bite my thumb. Oh yeah, Paul. Paul Marston. And there was one thing more, if it interests you. He was wearing a British Army service badge. Their version of the ruptured duck." "I see. What happened to him?" "I don't know. I came west. Next time I saw him he was here too— married to Harlan Potter's somewhat wild daughter. But you know all that." "They're both dead now. But thanks for telling me." "Not at all. Glad to help. Does it mean anything to you?" "Not a thing," I said, and I was a liar. "I never asked him about himself. He told me once he had been brought up in an orphanage. Isn't it just possible you made a mistake?" "With that white hair and that scarred face, brother?

Not a chance. I won't say I never forget a face, but not that one." "Did he see you?" "If he did, he didn't let on. Hardly expect him to in the circumstances. Anyhow he might not have remembered me. Like I said, he was always pretty well lit back in New online marketing solutionYork." I thanked him some more and he said it was a pleasure and we hung up. I thought about it for a while. The noise of the traffic outside the building on the boulevard made an unmusical obbligato to my thinking. It was too loud. In summer in hot weather everything is too loud. I got up and shut the lower part of the window and called Detective-Sergeant Green at Homicide. He was obliging enough to be in. "Look," I said, after the preliminaries, "I heard something about Terry Lennox that puzzles me. A fellow I know used to know him in New York under another name. You check his war record?" "You guys never learn," Green said harshly. "You just never learn to stay on your own side of the street. That matter is closed, locked up, weighted with lead and dropped in the ocean. Get it?" "I spent part of an afternoon with Harlan Potter last week at his daughter's house in Idle Valley. Want to check?" "Doing what?" he asked sourly. "Supposing I believe you." "Talking things over. I was invited. He likes me. Incidentally; he told me the girl was shot with a Mauser P.P.K. 7.65 mm. That news to you dermes vs medilase?" "Go on."