Free Perchance to Dream by Robert B. Parker

aware of who Mr. Simpson is?"
        "Looking around," I said, "I'd guess he was Ali Baba."
        "My God-how stupid can you be. You are entirely over your head and you haven't any idea. You really don't know."
        "Yeah," I said. "Sometimes I weep softly into my pillow just thinking about it. How about Simpson, do I see him?"
        "Certainly not," Mrs. Rudnick said. The thought seemed to cause her chest pains.
        "Does Simpson know anyone named Sternwood?" I said.
        "He certainly does not," Mrs. Rudnick said.
        Throughout our conversation she sat perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap, like a picture of Queen Victoria.
        "Maybe he knows them and hasn't told you," I said.
        That seemed to give her more chest pains.
        "Mr. Marlowe," she said, "I am Mr. Simpson's personal assistant! I have the pleasure of his full confidence. If he knew anyone named Sternwood, I too would know of it."
        "Vivian Sternwood knows him," I said.
        "Mr. Marlowe, I'm afraid this conversation is at an end."
        She picked up a small brass bell on the side table and jingled it discreetly.
        The door behind me opened and two of the suits came through it.
        "I want you to pay attention to me," Mrs. Rudnick said, "and not dismiss what I tell you simply because I am a woman. If you persist in annoying Mr. Simpson on this, or any matter, you will regret it for whatever is left of your life."
        "I'm not dismissing it because you're a woman, Mrs. Rudnick," I said. "I'm dismissing it because it doesn't scare me. The boys in the dark suits don't scare me. Randolph Simpson, whoever the hell he is, doesn't scare me. And if you think I've been annoying so far, wait until I shift into third."
        "You've been warned, Mr. Marlowe," Jean Rudnick said coldly. Her hands were still folded in her lap and her steely eyes never blinked as she watched me leave.
        The two suits walked me to rny car and stood looking at me blankly as I got in.
        I started up and let out the clutch and started down the driveway. As I left, I thought, for a moment, that I saw something stir in a second-floor window, a face for only a moment, then nothing. I drove on down the curving roadway and out through the ornate iron gate that closed silently behind me.
        

CHAPTER 11
        
        Captain Gregory gazed sadly at me across his desk and slowly shook his head.
        "You got a better chance of getting a search warrant for the White House," Gregory said. "I told you Bonsentir was wired. Simpson's who he's wired to."
        "Just because he's got a hundred million dollars?"
        "Just because of that," Gregory said. "I know it shouldn't be that way, and you know it shouldn't be that way, but you and I both been around too long to think it won't be that way here in the good old USA."
        "Even though I have reason to believe that there's a missing girl there, maybe a kidnap victim?"
        "You got the word of one wappy old dame in a sanitarium who spends her time reading stuff would make me blush."
        "And Mrs. Rudnick's denial that she'd ever heard of the Sternwoods?"
        "Maybe she hasn't. Maybe she doesn't know everyone her boss knows. Maybe Vivian knows him and he don't know her. Just because she knows him don't mean he's got her sister."
        "Be a pretty fair-sized coincidence," I said. "The old lady in Resthaven tells me Carmen's with a guy named Simpson, and Vivian knows a guy named Simpson."
        "Sure," Gregory said. "I don't like coincidence either. In the cop business you learn to doubt it. But it happens. And even if you and me and the mayor all saw her there, you still don't get a search warrant in this county to go through Randolph Simpson's house."
        "He buy a piece of you too, Captain?" I said.
        Gregory shifted comfortably in his chair and fumbled in his coat for pipe and tobacco.
        "Sure,"