[From a manuscript purported to be among the literary relicts of the
estate of Raymond Chandler, creator of the private investigator, Philip Marlowe. Chandler died in 1959. In observance of the
2013 Tour de France which will commence this July, as it does each year.]
The Six-Day Race
The phone by the bed jangled me out of a bad dream. Better late than never. I’d been dodging some rough customers, the
kind who need a shave and a new haberdasher. It was down around Mazatlan along the Cocaine
Corrida, and I was driving too fast, trying to lose a Packard-load of thugs in cheap
suits on the lane-and-a-half of a typical Mexican highway. I can’t say I was sorry to wake up, even
considering I’d emptied the office bottle and then some the previous evening. But that was history now and I knew before I was fully awake I’d have
to get reacquainted with my head for the rest of the day.
After a few fumbles I got the receiver right side up, just
in time to hear Lafferty already in full throat, like the sound of a lathe
cutting some mug’s headstone. All I
could think without coffee was, here we go again. Perfectly natural in the
circumstances. The circumstances were Lafferty.
Aw, Lafferty, I groaned. It’s nine-thirty in the a. m. What
can’t the entire L. A. police department figure out now?
Aw, don’t 'aw Lafferty'
me, Lafferty aw-Laffertyed me. We got a problem. You got a problem, more like
it.
I wasn’t awake yet. There was something I
wasn’t taking in. The Packard was still racing through the mists of my
subconscious, making me wonder what I could have done last night. Tell me about my problem, I moaned.
There’s a rub, Marlowe. I know you bet pretty heavy on those
six-day races down at the Coliseum. So, three days in and a schmoe in funny
shorts from the lead team goes past the concession stand, well in front. By the turn he’s gone, kaput, disappeared, like
an angel in the mist. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?
Marlowe?
I could see Lafferty’s face as he talked, eyes like gumboils, big nose cratered like the fenders on a getaway car. It didn’t improve my
hangover. Or my mood.
No, Lafferty, I wouldn’t know anything about that. You’re
absolutely correct in your surmise. I was waking up now.
Aw, don’t go all Sherlock Holmes on me, Lafferty barked. I was
impressed by his sudden ability to spot irony when it hit him in the kisser.
Look, I said. You know me well enough to know that I’m a
sporting man. I wouldn’t take any bet I could fix. You already know that. So
why are you calling at this hour?
There was dead silence on the other end, like when a
humanitarian has just shot the neighbor’s barking dog at six a.m. I didn’t figure it was you, Lafferty finally
said.
Thanks, I said. Could you say that again, just a little
louder and with some feeling?
Don’t push me, Marlowe. My point is, you know most of those
dainty-legged types with the cowhide up their asses. Find out what you can and
let us know, would you?
Why didn’t someone file a missing person report? I asked
him. It’s not that, Lafferty mumbled. It’s probably kidnapping, or drugs or
something like that.
Sure, I said. And where should I submit my expenses? And
then there’s the matter of my considerable upkeep.
The LAPD does not forget its friends, Marlowe, Lafferty said
in a plangent whisper. He sounded like he was lying to some woman on a dance floor.
I almost teared up. You
mean you won’t hassle me too much when another one of my clients turns up in
the morgue?
Like that, Lafferty said.
I’d been betting on the six-day races since the Coliseum
installed the best board track west of the Alleghenies. It was every bit as finely banked as the one
at the Garden, the Chicago boards were no better, and the L.A. track was faster
than either. I’d gotten to know the
racers, all the skinny-legged kids from Fresno and Sacramento, the banged-up
veterans from the Portland and Seattle circuits. Every kid had a dream, every
scar told a tale. I liked horse racing, but I liked bicycle racing better. Horses can’t talk. And they generally don’t have marital problems,
or owe anybody for barbiturates.
My general rule, when looking around for an easy solution,
is to talk to the janitor first. Janitors
belong to the second-oldest profession in the world. Meaning whatever the oldest profession might
be, someone had to clean up after it. And they would have at least an idea
about what went on. My Roladex had as
many phone numbers for guys named Stubby as it had numbers for girls named
Lulu.
Actually, the guy’s name was Luis and he was in his office
in the basement when I found him. He
pulled a bottle and two glasses out of his desk when he saw me. I offered him a cigarette, took one for
myself, flared a match on my thumbnail, lit us both and sat down.
Cheers, he said , yeah, it was the damnedest thing. This guy’s coming around the turn on the east
side of the arena, he’s just gone past the hot dog tienda, veers off into one of the bleacher aisles - no idea how he coulda
made that turn - through a double door into a loading area and no one’s had a
glimmer of him since. You didn’t pay him
to throw it, did you Marlowe, he asked with a big grin.
I ignored it. Who was
the guy, I asked, did he have a name? Clement
Atlee was what I heard, Luis said. Luis was a real card.
It doesn’t figure, I said. Bike racing is working-class
stuff – pretty soon guys from Texas will be in it and when that happens, I’m
out of it. I wouldn’t bet on a Texan to do anything but cheat the dealer.
You mean a gringo Texan, Luis insisted. So maybe Clement’s a
gringo Texan. Luis was trying my patience. but maybe he was on to something. I couldn't tell, him being a smartass Mexicano.
Clement Atlee’s the prime minister of Great
Britain, I said wearily. So did this guy Clement Atlee wear a vest and smoke a
pipe? Was he carrying a musette full
of diplomatic communications?
Luis was thoughtful, and not in an ironic way. Not that I
noticed, he said carefully. These guys don’t wear musettes. They all eat at the hot dog counter.
Yeah, I almost forgot, I said. They like to eat healthy.
I knew some bicycle racers. The way I figured them, they
weren’t in it for the dames. Those funny
legs don’t draw women. And for three
hundred dollar purses, they weren’t in it for the money. So I figured it had to
be for drugs – strychnine, cocaine, Dexadrol, Seconal, cheap champagne for the
hungover days, you name it, they’d try it and probably buy it. Putting a six-day racer next to a dime bag is
like putting a cheap suit next to a radiator – in ten minutes all you’ve got is
a mess on your hands.
I knew a few junk dealers on the Strip, too, so I thought
that might be a good place to start. It
was a warm evening and I’d had a brace of Beefeater gimlets and a rare Jap steak
over in La Brea with an old flame who wouldn’t say no, except at the wrong
times, so after I dropped her at her apartment building on La Cienega I put the
top down on the Buick and drove back into town to examine the trade along Sunset
Boulevard.
The Buick
Just outside the Town House Grille (with an ‘e’) I spotted
an old friend. His name was Eddie, never
a last name that I knew of. I pulled in
along the curb and he came up to the car, leaned over the door, and bummed a
smoke. I flared a match and lit it, he took a drag and started to look
interested. Wathcha got? he asked.
Whaddaya need? I asked.
Like always, he grinned back, money. I
fished out a Lincoln and handed it over. He rolled it up, bent down and put it
in his sock. He straightened, looked at me with renewed curiosity, and said,
So? Whaddaya need?
What do you know about Clement Atlee? I said after a minute.
Prime minister o’ Great Britain, our
grateful friend and ally in the last and we hope the final war among nations,
he said. I told him to cut the crap. Clement Atlee, I said.
He come by here last evening, pretty late, said he needed a
bag of blood pretty bad. Told me he could pay up after the last day of the race,
Sunday.
A bag of blood?
I thought he musta been crazy at first, but he told me that’s
how they do it – fresh blood in the veins, they seem to go longer or somethin’,
not sure how that would work, but . . . Eddie shuddered like a girl with a spider down her back.
What did you tell him?
I said I wasn’t in that line, never heard of anyone selling
blood. He says no, you can get a prescription for it, if you know the right
doc. Fresh blood is like medicine, he said.
That’s sick, I said. That’s what I told him, said Eddie. I said I ain’t in that line. And besides, I prob’ly
don’t have your type, I told him.
What type is that? I asked. He wasn’t sure, said Eddie. Thought it might
be B-positive.
Have any? I asked. Have to check the stock, Eddie said. So
where did he go? I asked. No idea, Eddie said. He said he had to get back,
might be disquallerfied or dropped or somethin’.
Don’t forget my number, I told him. No, sir, he said. I got
it in my heart.
Yeah, I said, like a lesion. Right, he said. Exactly.
Nowhere without it.
(To be continued)
