At around midnight, unable to sleep and following a lead, I found myself in the Bryson Tower off of Wilshire. The Bryson, a cream colored stucco fortress, is one of those places that looks like it came straight from the drafting table of a set designer with a mania for squeezing as many Ali Baba cliches into one building as possible.
The guy I came to see wasn't home so I turned my back to the hairy night clerk, lit a cigarette, walked through the too big lobby on its too blue carpet, past the giant blue oil jars scattered around, through the Arabic styled archway and into the muggy night.
As I rounded one of the forecourt's tall date palms I noticed a dim red glow coming from out of the shadows of a narrow side street. The smarter part of me wanted to keep walking; it was a quiet night, best to keep it that way. But I'd come some distance for nothing; the not-so-smart part of me wanted something to happen.
Something did.
I checked my Colt auto and slowly walked towards the fading red light. After a short stroll I was on top of it, or rather, standing over it looking down. It was one of Klaus' boys, the small reindeer they wrote songs about because of his neon nose. Rudolph. He was lying in a spreading pool of blood. Unfortunately, it was his own. There was the cutest little bullet hole in his side. He only had a few minutes left.
I'd seen him earlier, just before Christmas, in a no-questions-asked downtown club where no one minded serving drinks to an animal who randomly crapped on the floor while almost blinding everyone in the joint with his incendiary nose. He was full of liquor and dangerous boasts, which usually follow each other as night does day. He wasn't happy with how Klaus handled the business and he didn't care who knew it. Outside of stupid circles it was pretty commonly known that Klaus was a brutal operator with a low tolerance for his people getting big ideas about going solo.
"Looks like the old bastard heard your complaints" I whispered to the dying reindeer. He seemed to nod in grim agreement. I told him that I was going for help and then hurried back into the cavernous lobby of the Bryson to wake up the night clerk. "Call the police" I told him. He looked at me with the acuity of a drugged cow. I told him again. By about the fourth try, the message hit home.
...
Almost an hour later, long after it was too late, the cops showed up with an ambulance in hot pursuit. I was standing near the body, quietly smoking. A young cop walked up to me. He looked at Rudolph's body, then at me. I could tell something unnecessary was about to come out of his mouth and waited in eager anticipation. He didn't disappoint. "You do this Marlowe?" he asked.
"Sure, that's right" I said. "That's what I do; I kill and then, just to make your life easier, I ring you up to see what a good boy I am."
This didn't sit too well with the rookie. I could see, from his narrowed eyes and tightened lips, that he was weighing the pros and cons of taking his night stick out for a little target practice. After a few tense minutes he thought the better of it. "Well, anyway, we'll need you to stay here to answer a few questions so you might as well settle in cause it's going to be a long night."
I lit another cigarette. "Yeah, figures."
...
.d.