Farewell, My Lovely

Marlowe is looking at a picture of Rembrandt on the calendar in his office. Marlowe notes that Rembrandt’s face is “aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew” (41).

The phone rings; it’s a man named Lindsay Marriott calling. He asks if Marlowe is a private investigator and if he can come to his house that night. Marlowe is initially suspicious because Marriott won’t give him any details, but Marriott says that he will pay his expenses even if he won’t take the job, so he agrees to meet him that night. Marlowe thinks, “A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood. The end of my foot itched, but my bank account was still trying to crawl under a duck. I put honey into my voice and said: ‘Many thanks for calling me, Mr. Marriott. I’ll be there’” (42).

Nulty calls and says that Malloy went to see Jessie. Apparently, the nosy neighbor called in the tip because she saw him walking out with a gun, although she didn’t hear any shots come from inside the home. Nulty says that the cops went to check it out, but that it looks like Jessie left town. Nulty asks Marlowe if he can help him again with figuring things out with Jessie, but he declines, saying, “Seventeen hundred and fifty cops in this town and they want me to do their leg work for them” (45). 

Marlowe drives to visit Marriott. He goes “down to Montemar Vista as the light began to fade, but there was still a fine sparkle on the water and the surf was breaking far out in long smooth curves” (46). Montemar Vista is comprised of wealthy houses that are tucked on the hills overlooking the ocean.

Marlowe knocks on Marriott’s door, and he answers. Marlowe notes that Marriott’s appearance:

A little on the heavy side, but handsome, he had an inch more of height than I had, which made him six feet one. His blond hair was arranged, by art or nature, in three precise blond ledges which reminded me of steps, so that I didn’t like them. I wouldn’t have liked them anyway. Apart from all this he had the general appearance of a lad who would wear a white flannel suit with a violet scarf around his neck and a cornflower in his lapel (48).

Marriott invites him in; his house is expensively decorated with exotic art. Marriott smokes a fancy cigarette; Marlowe smokes a Camel. Marlowe asks about the details of the job, and Marriott hesitantly fills them in, although vaguely. He says, quite basically, that his lady friend was wearing a Fei Tsui “necklace of sixty beads of about six carats each, intricately carved. Worth eighty or ninety thousand dollars. […] My friend’s necklace was taken in a holdup a few nights ago. I was present, but quite helpless” (53). Marriott says that he was driving his friend when they were involved in a stickup in the car. Two men stole his lady friend’s jewelry, and told them not to tell the police. It was assumed that Marriott and his friend would pay a ransom to get the jewels back.

Marriott says that they’re paying “[e]ight thousand dollars. It’s dirt cheap. But if my friend couldn’t get another like it, these thugs couldn’t very easily dispose of it, either” (54). Marriott won’t tell Marlowe the name of his lady friend. He says that he simply wants Marlowe to accompany him as he gives the men the money and gets the necklace back. He doesn’t want Marlowe to carry a gun; instead, he wants him there for moral support. Marlowe thinks the details of the job seem fishy, but he agrees to accompany Marriott because Marriott is paying him $100. The two share drinks before heading off for the switch. 

Marlowe agrees that he will drive the car and get the necklace while Marriott hides in the back seat. Marriott’s “big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances” (59). Marlowe drives along the twists and turns of the bluffs and finally reaches the remote meeting spot. He parks, and Marriott realizes that they can’t fit the car down the dirt road. Instead, Marlowe takes the money and walks to the spot, leaving Marriott hiding in the car.

Marlowe holds his gun close and stands in the agreed-upon spot, but he doesn’t see anyone or hear any sounds. He waits for some time, but decides that the men are a no-show. He goes back to the car. He approaches the car and says that the men must have been testing them. Then there “was a vague movement behind me but he [Marriott] didn’t answer. I went on trying to see something besides bushes. Whoever it was had a nice easy shot at the back of my head” (62). Someone hits Marlowe in the back of the head and he passes out.

Marlowe wakes up talking to himself. He’s trying to figure out what happened to him, and he decides that the men must have been waiting in the bushes for him to come back. He thinks he must have been unconscious twenty minutes:

Twenty minutes’ sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out (65).

His head is hurt and bleeding, he feels dizzy, and he realizes he’s alone and the car is gone. He uses the small light from a pen and follows the tracks of the car. He finds it parked off in the distance, but it’s empty; the keys are in the ignition. As he’s inspecting the car, he hears another car coming in the distance. He’s scared and tries to hide behind the car. The distant car stops, and he hears a woman’s voice. She shines a light, and tells him to step into the light or she’ll shoot. He comes out and walks up to her. She tries to ask him questions, like what is he doing here, but he answers her questions with more questions. He asks if she has seen a blond man, Marriott, and she says yes, but he’s dead: “That jarred me. Somehow I hadn’t expected it” (69). Marlowe then asks her to take him to his body. 

Marlowe says that Marriott:

lay smeared to the ground, on his back, at the base of a bush, in that bag-of-clothes position that always means the same thing. His face was a face I had never seen before. His hair was dark with blood, the beautiful blond ledges were tangled with blood and some thick grayish ooze, like primeval slime (71).

Marlowe notes that the murder seems excessively violent for some petty jewel thieves and thinks it must have been personal. He goes through Marriott’s wallet, but the woman says they should wait for the police. He doesn’t listen, and he finds a silk cigarette case hidden in a secret pocket. The girl notes that the cigarettes look like “jujus,” or marijuana cigarettes (73).

Marlowe shines the light in her face and notices that she is a lovely-faced redhead. She says her name is Anne Riordan. Marlowe wonders why she is out here alone, and she replies, “Sometimes at night I go riding. Just restless. I live alone. I’m an orphan. I know all this neighborhood like a book. I just happened to be riding along and noticed a light flickering down in the hollow” (74). She says she wasn’t scared because she had a gun. Marlowe explains what happened and his connection to it all, adding that “[t]here was something wrong with this job from the start. I could feel it. But I needed the money” (75).

She tries to invite him to her house to call the cops and have a drink, but he says no, that he doesn’t want her involved. Instead, he walks to the police station to tell them what happened. 

The chapter starts, “It was an hour and a half later. The body had been taken away, the ground gone over, and I had told my story three or four times. We sat, four of us, in the day captain’s room at the West Los Angeles station” (77). Randall, “from Central Homicide in Los Angeles,” tells Marlowe that his story sounds ridiculous (78). Marriott said that he found Marlowe’s name in the phone book, but Marriott had Marlowe’s card in his wallet, proving that was a lie.

Although no one knows anything about Marriott or what happened, Randall says that “[i]t looks like an amateur job, but of course it might be meant to look like an amateur job” (79). Randall basically deduces that everything about the job feels fishy. He tells Marlowe that he better not be keeping information from him just to work the case on his own, warning him to stay away from the case and implying that it’s dangerous and that there’s more going on than Marlowe knows.