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