THE PERFECT CRIME MAX ALLAN COLLINS SHE WAS THE first movie star I ever worked for, but I wasn’t much impressed. If I were that easily impressed, I’d have been impressed by Hollywood itself. And having seen the way Hollywood portrayed my profession on the so-called silver screen, I wasn’t much impressed with Hollywood.
On the other hand, Dolores Dodd was the most beautiful woman who ever wanted to hire my services, and that did impress me. Enough so that when she called me, that October, and asked me to drive out to her “sidewalk cafe” nestled under the palisades in Montemar Vista, I went, wondering if she would be as pretty in the flesh as she was on celluloid.
I’d driven out the Pacific Coast Highway that same morning, a clear cool morning with a blue sky lording it over a vast sparkling sea. Pelicans were playing tag with the breaking surf, flying just under the curl of the white-lipped waves. Yachts, like a child’s toy boats, floated out there between me and the horizon. I felt like I could reach out for one, pluck and examine it, sniff it maybe, like King Kong checking out Fay Wray’s lingerie.
Dolores Dodd’s Sidewalk Cafe, as a billboard on the hillside behind it so labeled the place, was a sprawling two-story hacienda affair, as big as a beached luxury liner. Over its central, largest-of-many archways, a third-story tower rose like a stubby lighthouse. There weren’t many cars here—it was approaching ten a.m., too early for the luncheon crowd, and even Marlowe didn’t drink cocktails that early in the day. Not and tell, anyway.
She was waiting in the otherwise unpopulated cocktail lounge, where massive wooden beams in a traditional Spanish mode fought the chromium-and-leather furnishings and the chrome-and-glass brick bar and came out a draw. She was a big blonde woman with more curves than the highway out front and just the right number of hills and valleys. Wearing a clingy, summery white dress, she was seated on one of the bar stools, with her bare legs crossed; they weren’t the best-looking legs on the planet, necessarily. I just couldn’t prove otherwise. That good a detective I’m not.
“Philip Marlowe?” she asked, and her smile dimpled her cheeks in a manner that made her whole heart-shaped face smile, and the world smile as well, including me. She didn’t move off the stool, just extended her hand in a manner that was at once casual and regal.
. . .
