The Essential Humphrey Bogart by Constantine Santas

Author:Constantine Santas [Santas, Constantine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

After Marlowe gets his assignment from General Sternwood, who is sitting in a wheelchair, bundled up in his hothouse though the temperature/humidity is melting the flowers, he moves quickly to his assignment. The general reveals to him that his younger daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers), had written large promissory notes to one Arthur G. Geiger, who then sent those notes to the general along with a handwritten card complaining that these, being gambling debts, ought to be honored. The general also mentions that he had paid a check of $5,000 some months earlier to a man called Joe Brody, made out to Brody by Shawn Regan, the general’s handy man (in the novel Regan is Vivian’s current husband), who used to work for the general and had left him abruptly a month earlier without any explanation. Regan had commanded a brigade during the Irish Rebellion, the general says, and Marlowe recognized the name as he and Regan, who used to import rum from Mexico, had exchanged gunshots sometime in the past but had stayed on friendly terms. Marlowe’s assignment is to get rid of Geiger, leaving it to Marlowe to choose the way of doing it. The general is cynical about his daughters, whom he cannot save from their own corruption, as they have inherited his own corrupt blood, he says. He describes his older daughter, Vivian, as “exacting, smart, and ruthless,” while Carmen is “a child who likes to pull wings off flies.” Self-reproachfully, he adds, “A man who engages in parenthood at my age deserves all he gets.” As if to confirm the general’s bitter remarks about his daughters, Marlowe tells him that Carmen had tried to sit on his lap while he was standing, just after he had entered the building. Before he leaves the general, Marlowe recommends that he pay Geiger the promissory notes and undertakes to find out what this is all about. As Marlowe leaves, Norris, the butler, asks him to see Mrs. Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), Mrs. Regan in the Chandler novel, who worries about her father, and she begs that Marlowe treat him with consideration. But her motives, not to mention her insolent manner, don’t ingratiate her with Marlowe, who leaves her abruptly.

Marlowe’s first step is to go to the Hollywood Public Library to take some notes on rare editions to use as a ruse to visit Geiger’s bookstore. When he asks Agnes (Sonya Darrin), the salesgirl at Geiger’s, for a copy of an 1880 third edition of Ben-Hur and a Chevalier Audubon from 1840, the woman becomes uneasy and dismisses him rudely.

Marlowe then enters a real bookstore across the street, named Acme, run by a bespectacled young Dorothy Malone (otherwise nameless), and she informs him that the book he asked for does not exist. “But the woman in Geiger’s place did not know that,” explains Marlowe. Then she does give him a good description of Geiger—middle-aged, medium height, fattish, a glass left eye, chauffeured by a man called Carol Lundgren. By that time

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