"If they do you should get better help than the two yahoos you got following you around now."

"That's the truth," Lippy said. "Hard to get people to come out here, I mean this ain't Los Angeles. Not everybody likes the desert. Why I was so glad when I found out you was here. I heard about you when you were operating out of Hollywood."

"Your lucky day," I said. "What do you want me to do?"

He handed me an IOU for $100,000, with the signature Les Valentine across the bottom in a neat, very small hand. Then he sat back to let that sink in.

"Me," Lippy said, "taking a guy's marker for a hundred g's. I must be getting old."

"How come you did?" I said.

"He had money in the family. Always made good before."

"And when Mr. Big that runs you audited the books one day he noticed you were 100,000 short."

"His bookkeeper," Lipshultz said. "And Mr. Black-stone came to see me."

The air-conditioned room was full of cold, but Lipshultz was sweating. He pulled the silk show handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck with it.

"Drove right out here himself and sat where you're sitting and told me I had thirty days to cover the loss," Lipshultz said.

"Or?"

"There ain't no 'or' with Mr. Blackstone, Marlowe."

"So you want me to find the guy who stuck you."

Lipshultz nodded.

"I find people, Lipshultz, I don't shake them down."

"That's all I'm asking you, Marlowe. I'm out a hundred grand. I don't get it back and I'm dead. You find the guy. Talk to him."

"What if he doesn't have it? Guys that lose a hundred g's at the tables don't usually have it for long," I said.

"He's got it. His wife's worth twenty, thirty million."

"So why not ask her?"

"I have, she don't believe me. She says her Lester wouldn't do that. And I say ask Lester, and she says he's away now, doing stills for some movie shooting north of L.A."