Chapter 23: Not as it Seems
|
We went over to a big gleaming ground-car and the man in the smock pulled the rear door open. On the wide back seat, loosely arranged, covered to the chin with a plaid robe, a man lay snoring with his mouth open. He seemed to be a big blond man who would hold a lot of liquor. "Meet Mr Larry Cobb," Vivian said. "Mister Cobb - Mister Marlowe." I grunted. "Mr Cobb was my escort," she said. "Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober." "Yeah," I said. "I've even thought of marrying him," she went on in a high strained voice, as if the shock of the stick-up was just beginning to get to her. "At odd times when nothing pleasant would come into my mind. We all have those spells. Lots of money, you know. A vast space-yacht, a place on Earth, a place on Venus, a place on Titan, places dotted here and there all over the system probably - just a good Scotch bottle apart. And to Mr Cobb a bottle of Scotch is not very far." "Yeah," I said. "Does he have a driver to take him home?" "Don't say ‘yeah'. It's common." She looked at me with arched eyebrows. The man in the smock was chewing his lower lip hard. "Oh, undoubtedly a whole platoon of drivers. They probably do squads right in front of the garage every morning, buttons shining, harness gleaming, white gloves immaculate - a sort of West Point elegance about them." "Well, where the hell is this driver?" I asked. "He drove himself tonight," the man in the smock said, almost apologetically. "I could call his home and have somebody come down for him." Vivian turned around and smiled at him as if he had just presented her with a diamond tiara. "That would be lovely," she said. "Would you do that? I really wouldn't want Mr Cobb to die like that - with his mouth open. Someone might thing he had died of thirst." The man in the smock said: "Not if they sniffed him, miss." She opened her bag and grabbed a handful of paper money and pushed it at him. "You'll take care of him, I'm sure." "Jeeze," the man said, pop-eyed. "I sure will, miss." "Regan is the name," she said sweetly, "Mrs Regan. You'll probably see me again. Haven't been here long, have you?" "No'm." His hands were doing frantic things with the fistful of money he was holding. "You'll get to love it here," she said. She took hold of my arm. "Let's ride in your car, Marlowe." "It's a rickshaw. I left it out on the street." "Quite all right with me, Marlowe. I love a nice walk in the fog. You meet such interesting people." "Oh nuts," I said. She held on to my arm and began to shake. She held me hard all the way to the rickshaw. She had stopped shaking by the time we reached it. I woke the bot and it drove us down a curving lane of trees on the blind side of the house. The lane opened up onto the main drag. We passed under ancient streetlights and after a while there was a town, buildings, dead-looking stores, a service station with a light over a night bell, and at last a drugstore that was still open. "You'd better have a drink," I said. She moved her chin, a point of paleness in the corner of the seat. I motioned the bot to pull into the kerb and park. "A little black coffee and a smattering of rye would go well," I said. "I could get as drunk as two sailors and love it." She got out close to me, brushing my cheek with her hair. We went into the drugstore. I bought a half-litre of rye at the liquor counter and carried it over to the stools and set it down on the cracked marble counter. "Two coffees," I said. "Black, strong and made this year." The clerk glared at me. He had a washed-out blue smock, was thin on top as to hair, had fairly honest eyes and his chin would never hit a wall before he saw it. Vivian Regan reached into her bag for a packet of cigarettes and shook a couple loose. She held them towards me. I lit the cigarettes and handed one to her. The clerk drew two cups of coffee from a tarnished metal urn and set them in front of us. He looked at the bottle of rye and muttered something under his breath. He went and stood at the display window with his back to us and his ears hanging out. I unscrewed the top of the whisky bottle and loaded the coffee. The clerk turned suddenly and walked back behind the counter and went in behind the little glass window of the prescription counter.
|
Part 1