The Client Nobody Knew
Stein, Benjamin
"The Client Nobody Knew" FOR SOME REASON, I always kept the door to my outer office unlocked. The door was on the third floor of an office building that hadn't been new when I had moved in thirty years ago, and it hadn't...
...But there was a kind of Irish twinkle about his eyes, so I didn't think he was going to have one of his gorillas hit me...
...Somehow, no matter how much dough they have, if they think you're down and out, they try to get your price down...
...I know who you look like, but I can't see him coming all the way up here from San Clemente to use a private shamus when he has the whole Secret Service...
...Now I have only about twenty-five percent of it, and I want to know what happened to it...
...Of course I'm Marlowe," I said...
...He looked kind of familiar...
...Need something to get your eyes open...
...But I want you to find it...
...But then again we would be playing for high stakes...
...I turned around my chair and looked out into the gray L.A...
...He looked right past me, out through my dusty windows where the cars were racing by on the San Diego Freeway...
...I came up with a pint of rye and two glasses...
...He was sitting there in my outer office when I came in, with two thugs sitting on either side of him on my worn-out couch...
...It's hard for me to explain," he said,falteringly...
...He looked as if he might at last come to the point...
...But what's on your mind...
...I'm not trying to hold back anything that would be useful or that you would need for your investigation...
...Look, let's can the small talk and you can come into my inner office and take the load off your feet...
...I asked him as I Voured myself a short one...
...The man sitting across from me must have been reading my mind...
...He seemed to be trying to think of what to say next...
...The door was on the third floor of an office building that hadn't been new when I had moved in thirty years ago, and it hadn't gotten any newer...
...He was about as clear as the picture on my fifteen-year-old black-and-white television set...
...And maybe we better start with you telling me who you are...
...And not so loud about the Secret Service...
...Do you really not know who I am...
...I'm not sure...
...That's who I am," he said evenly...
...Well, I never had all of it," he said, "but at one time I had over sixty percent of it...
...Oh Christ," I thought, "a politician...
...He looked terribly sincere when he said it, as if he thought I might be tape recording what he said with a video tape recorder...
...He was one of those guys who chews a thought over and over, like an Irish setter with a bone, or maybe a bloodhound...
...In my business there are a lot of dead ends...
...His blue suit looked like it cost $300 and maybe it did...
...Or had taken from you...
...Look jack," I said, '"Eva the Palm Reader is down the hall...
...I admire the spirit of those people who try to make themselves and their countries succeed by working...
...His eyes suddenly looked terribly sad and I felt a pang of pity for this man whom I did not even know...
...It had been longer than I liked to think since I had a paying client, and I didn't want him to know that...
...I don't deal in riddles, at least not when I can help it...
...I should have been tipped off by the enormous limousine waiting at the curb outside the building...
...he asked in a confident and again familiar voice...
...I think that a man who drinks should be sure that he can both drink and drive...
...No, I thought you were," I said, "Isn't this your office...
...One of the bodyguards looked at me as if he wanted to break me up and use me for toothpicks, but I saw that the man in charge had gestured to both of them to sit down...
...Look, I haven't seemed to have had any trouble getting down here this morning, so I guess I can drive and drink...
...At the same time, I have to think of my office and those who come after me in it...
...But minus the heat, I don't like anybody packing iron in my office except me...
...But mine was fifty dollars a day plus expenses and nobody could make me come down from that...
...When he finally spoke, he didn't help me out too much with what my first job always is with a new client—figuring him out...
...What the hell, I thought, a man's got to make a living...
...I have always believed that a man, or a woman, should be able to earn more by working than by going on welfare," he said, and then paused as if he was waiting for me to applaud...
...Ever since Lipschitz's funeral parlor had been torn down to make way for a Taco Bell across the street, not too many people came down my street in limousines...
...We walked into my office and I got into my chair and reached for the bottom drawer of my desk...
...It was going to be one of those cases...
...I reached into the bottom drawer for another pinch of rye...
...Are you Marlowe...
...I want you to get it back...
...You're in it...
...I've lost something," he said after a long pause...
...Who do you think I have with me out there...
...He looked at me for a very long time, as if he were still trying to make up his mind about whether he could trust me...
...Who else would be in this dump before noon...
...Just checking to be sure you knew your own name," the man quipped, with what I guess he thought was humor...
...It too was old, but the people who came to see me were usually too nervous to sit down anyway...
...Legally, of course...
...It long since had been put into shade and then shadow by the Century Cities and Universal Cities of Los Angeles, but I figured it could still be found by anybody who needed me .badly enough...
...His eyes had a kind of look as if they had seen a lot of sad things, things he didn't want to talk about, but had to...
...I suddenly had an idea of what he wanted me to find and I wondered if I was up to it...
...His nose did a slow ski slope droop and his black and gray hair was pulled back crisply across his head...
...The familiar looking man rose, and his goons got up too...
...Look," I said, "I can live without the sermons...
...Evidently somebody did...
...Maybe it would help if you told me what it was you seem to have lost...
...Look, what is this office...
...What do you want me to do...
...I want another grand on top of that if I find what you're looking for and can return it to you...
...he said, less a question than a resigned declaration of how far he had fallen...
...That's him," one of the bodyguards chimed in...
...Of course, he was too, and I knew it when I said it...
...Then, after another pause he added, "or maybe somebody took it from me...
...He looked as if he had been through hell on his hands and knees but would still come out and answer the bell for the next round...
...And stay alive too," he added as an afterthought...
...My fee's fifty a day plus expenses...
...I don't get too many ministers in my line of work...
...His face took on a faraway look, as if he were remembering his honeymoon...
...Then his face clouded over again...
...If you aren't here for a free snort, maybe you have some kind of business for a private dick...
...Maybe I could find what he wanted and maybe I couldn't...
...That would be a convenient place to start...
Vol. 8 • November 1974 • No. 2
