The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Benjamin Black

Author:Benjamin Black [Black, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Hard-Boiled, Private Investigators
Amazon: B00ERQ6RGY
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2014-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

17

The hour was long past midnight, and I was lying on my bed in my shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette and staring at the ceiling. The bedside lamp was on, and those painted roses were throwing shadows up the walls—they looked like bloodstains someone had started to wash away and then given up on.

I was thinking about this and that, this being Clare Cavendish, and that being Clare Cavendish too. The side of the bed I was on was the side where she’d lain, and I could smell the fragrance of her hair on the pillow, or thought I could, anyway. I was telling myself how right I’d been to let her go. She was not only good-looking but loaded, and that kind of woman just wasn’t for me. Linda Loring, over there in Paris, was another of the same type, which was why I wasn’t too keen on marrying her, though she kept on asking. Linda and I went to bed together once, and I guess she did love me, but why she thought love should inevitably lead to marriage, I didn’t know. Her sister had been married to Terry Lennox and ended up with a bullet in her brain and her face smashed in. Hardly an example of conjugal bliss. Besides, I wasn’t young anymore, and maybe I wasn’t going to marry anyone.

The phone rang, and I knew it was Clare. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. I have a thing with phones—I hate them, but I seem to be on their wavelength in some funny way.

“Is that you?” Clare said.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“It’s late, I know. Were you asleep? I’m sorry if I woke you.” She spoke very slowly, as if in a trance. “I couldn’t think who else to call.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I wonder—I wonder if you could come to the house?”

“To your house? Now?”

“Yes. I need—I need someone to—” Her voice began to shake and she had to stop for a few seconds and get it under control. She sounded close to hysteria. “It’s Rett,” she said.

“Your brother?”

“Yes—Everett.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

She paused again. “I really would appreciate if you could come here. Do you think you could? Am I asking too much?”

“I’ll come,” I said.

Of course I’d come. I would have gone to her if she’d been calling from the dark side of the moon. It’s strange, the sudden way things can change. A minute ago I’d been congratulating myself on getting rid of her, but now it was as if a door had been flung open inside me and I was running out through it with my hat in my hand and my coattails flying. Why had I driven her away, making dumb wisecracks and acting like a heel? What the hell was wrong with me, to send a gorgeous woman like that out into the night with her lips set like a vise and her forehead pale with anger? Did I think I was such a hotshot that I could afford to push

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