The Big Sleep: Chapter 2

"Sure, but there's very little to tell. I'm a hundred and thirty-three years old, went to college Earth-side once and can still speak English if there's any demand for it. There isn't much in my trade. I worked for Arnold Wilde, the Outer System Habitats Attorney, as an investigator once. His chief investigator, a man named Bernie Ohls, called me and told me you wanted to see me. I'm unmarried, after two attempts, because I've found I don't like policeman's wives."

"And a little bit of a cynic," the old man smiled. "You didn't like working for Wilde?"

"I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General."

"I always did myself, sir. I'm glad to hear it. What do you know about my family?"

"I see from the nets you are a widower and have two daughters, both pretty and both wild. Once of them has been married three times, the last time to an ex-arms dealer, who went in the trade by the name of Rusty Regan. That's all I read, General."

"Did any of it strike you as peculiar?"

"The Rusty Regan part, maybe. But I always got along with arms dealers myself."

He smiled his faint economical smile. "It seems I do too. I'm very fond of Rusty. A big curly-headed Irishman, actually from Old Earth, with sad eyes and a smile as wide as Saturn's Rings. The first time I saw him I thought he might be what you are probably thinking he was, an adventurer who happened to get himself wrapped up in some velvet."

"You must have liked him," I said, "You learned to talk the language."

He moved his thin bloodless hands against the casket. I put my cigarette stub out and finished my drink.

"He was the breath of life to me - while he lasted. He spent hours with me, shivering with the cold, drinking brandy and hot water by the litre and telling me stories of the Martian revolution. He had been an officer in the Separationists. It was a ridiculous marriage, of course, and it probably didn't last a month, as a marriage. I'm telling you the family secrets, Mr Marlowe."

"They're still secrets," I said, "What happened to him?"

The old man looked at me woodenly. "He went away, a month ago. Abruptly, without a word to anyone. Without leaving a message. Without saying goodbye to me. That hurt a little, but he had been raised in a rough school. I'll hear from him one of these days. Meantime, I am being blackmailed again."

"Again?"

He brought his hands up clutching a brown envelope in them. "I should have been very sorry for anyone who tried to blackmail me while Rusty was around. A few months before he came - that is to say, about nine or ten months ago - I paid a man named Joe Brody five million dollars to let my younger daughter Carmen alone."

"Ah," I said.

He moved his thin white eyebrows. "That means what?"

"Nothing," I said.

He went on staring at me, half frowning. Then he said: "Take this envelope and examine it. And help yourself to the brandy."

I took the envelope from his hands. It was addressed to General Guy Sternwood, machine printed in italics in a mock-antique style. The envelope was slit. I opened it up and took out a brown card and three slips of stiff paper. The card was thin brown linen, mechanically printed in gold: "Arthur Gwynne Geiger." Very small in the lower left corner: "Geiger's Counter. Rare Media and Antique Books." I turned the card over. More of the slanted printing on the back: "Dear Sir; In spite of the legal uncollectability of the enclosed, which frankly represent gambling debts, I assume you might wish them honoured. Respectfully, A. G. Geiger."

I looked at the slips of smart white paper. The surface of one of them swirled with encrypted data which resolved after a moment into a human-readable message: "On demand, I promise to pay to Arthur Gwynne Geiger the sum of One Hundred Thousand Dollars with interest. Value received. Carmen Sternwood."

I mixed myself another drink and sipped it and put the exhibits aside.

"Your conclusions?" the General asked.

"I haven't any yet. Who is this Arthur Gwynne Geiger?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"What does Carmen say?"

"I haven't asked her. I don't intend to. If I did, she would bat her eyelashes at me and look coy."

I said: "I met her in the hall. She did that to me. Then she sucked my dick."

Nothing changed in his expression. His clasped hands rested on the cryogenic casket, and the cold, which made me feel like an excursion on Pluto without a spacesuit, didn't seem to affect him.

"Do I have to be polite?" I asked. "Or can I just be natural?"

"I hadn't noticed that you suffer from many inhibitions, Mr Marlowe."

"Do the two girls run around together?"

"I think not. I think they go their separate and slightly divergent roads to perdition. Vivian is spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless. Carmen is a precocious child who demands things her way. Neither of them has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither do I. No Sternwood ever has. Proceed."

"They're well educated, I suppose. They know what they're doing."

"Vivian went to good schools of the snob type and to college on Earth. Carmen went to half a dozen schools of greater and greater liberality, and ended up where she started. I presume they both had, and still have, all the usual vices. If I sound a little sinister as a parent, Mr Marlowe, it is because my hold on life to too slight to indulge in any Twentieth Century hypocrisy."

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, the life-support machinery wheezing suddenly. The he opened them again.

"I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of two hundred and fifty-four deserves all he gets."

Part 1

Part 3