Summary
In Evelyn’s backyard, Evelyn serves Jake a drink. He notes that no staff are there. She says she has sent the staff home, irritated by his implication. He claims it’s an innocent question. She says no question from him is innocent. She asks about the danger, and he says the last time his life was threatened was when he worked for the district attorney in Chinatown.
However, Jake won’t say what he did in Chinatown. He asks for peroxide to clean his bloody nose wound. She brings him to the bathroom and is shocked by how nasty the cut is. While she is treating the wound, he notices a black flaw in her green iris. Their mouths move closer and they kiss passionately as romantic music plays.
The scene cuts to Evelyn and Jake in bed together, naked. They are both smoking cigarettes. Evelyn is asking about his past. He says he doesn’t like to talk about Chinatown, cryptically saying it was “bad luck.” He admits he was trying to keep someone from being hurt, but ended up “making sure she was hurt.” He admits there was a woman involved. She is interrupted by the phone ringing. She says, “Don’t do anything until I get there.” She hangs up and says she has to go, but won’t tell him where or why. She says it has nothing to do with him.
Before she leaves, Evelyn admits Noah Cross owns the Albacore Club. Jake says he knows, and admits he met with Noah. Evelyn becomes concerned-looking and says her father is a dangerous man and concedes that he may be behind her husband’s murder. She asks Jake to stay there, saying she needs him there. While she is in the shower, Jake throws on his pants and goes outside to break one of Evelyn’s taillight reflectors.
The scene cuts to Jake following Evelyn’s car on a winding road in the dark. He is driving Hollis’s car. He tracks her red and white mismatched taillights to a suburban house. She enters the home. Jake goes around back and looks through the window as Evelyn interacts with the butler and then goes through to a bedroom where Hollis’s Spanish-speaking girlfriend is sobbing in a single bed. Evelyn gives her some sort of pill.
When Evelyn returns to her vehicle, Jake is waiting inside. Evelyn says the girl isn’t being held against her will but is upset about Hollis’s death. Evelyn says she just found out about it. Jake says it looks like she knows more than Evelyn wants the girl to tell. Jake promises to not go to the police if Evelyn tells him what’s really happening. Evelyn quivers, and says, “She’s my sister.” Jake seems satisfied with the answer and says he won’t tell anyone about it. Addressing her as Mrs. Mulwray, Jake says he isn’t coming home with her because he’s tired.
After a shower, Jake puts on pajamas and lies in bed. His phone rings and a man says Ida Sessions wants to see him. He says she can call him at his office if she wants to see him. He hangs up. The phone rings again. The man gives an address in Echo Park and says she begged him to call and that she’s waiting for Jake. In the morning, Jake drives Hollis’s car to the address. The glass panel next to the doorknob is smashed and Ida is lying dead on the kitchen floor. He checks her purse and finds her wallet, seeing that it seems to contain everything it should.
In the bathroom, Lou Escobar and Detective Loach are waiting with flashlights. They reveal they found his phone number on the wall above her phone and called him to get him to the scene. Escobar questions Jake about the photographs he took when Ida hired him to investigate Hollis Mulwray. Escobar says he wants the other photographs. He admits Hollis’s death wasn’t an accident and that he had salt water in his lungs. He accuses Jake of being involved in covering up Evelyn’s role in the murder; he demands to see the other photos Jake took while tailing Hollis. Jake admits Hollis was looking into the nighttime dumping of water. Jake takes Escobar to the first site to show him the runoff tube. Escobar tells Jake to bring Evelyn to speak with him, and reminds Jake that he “has him for withholding evidence.”
Jake goes to Evelyn’s house. A maid tells Jake that she isn’t home and Jake sees that the maid is covering furniture in dust cloths. She won’t tell him where Evelyn is. Out back, Jake learns from the Japanese gardener that when he earlier said “bad for glass,” Jake misheard him. The gardener was actually saying the salt-water feature is “bad for grass,” referring to the surrounding lawn, which is dying at the edges close to the water. Jake spots again the shiny object and the man retrieves him for it, pulling away clumps of seaweed. Jake holds up the object, which is a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.
Analysis
Polanski returns to the theme of trauma with Jake and Evelyn’s return to the Mulwray house. Curious about Jake’s past, Evelyn asks whether Jake has found himself in the same sort of trouble they just escaped. Without getting into details, Jake admits he hasn’t been in danger like that since the time he worked for the District Attorney in Chinatown. Although Evelyn would like to know more, Jake changes the subject so he doesn't have to say any more about his traumatic past.
However, once the two have had sex, Evelyn asks more about the episode. Still speaking cryptically, Jake admits he doesn’t like to talk about the unfortunate experience, but it involved him trying to keep a woman safe. Unwittingly, though, his effort to protect her led to her being hurt. From his general description, the viewer can surmise that Jake had been romantically involved with the woman, and their intimate entanglement may have clouded his judgment, causing him to make a mistake that accidentally led to her injury or death.
The intimate mood is disrupted by Evelyn’s phone ringing. The panic in Evelyn’s voice piques Jake’s interest, and he shifts back from being Evelyn’s lover to being a private investigator immediately, running down to break one of her taillights so he can keep track of her vehicle as he secretly follows her to another house. Once Jake is there, Polanski draws out the dramatic irony by showing Evelyn trying to calm the blonde woman who was photographed with Hollis. Beyond that, she gives the girl a pill, perhaps a sedative.
Believing he has caught Evelyn keeping Hollis’s mistress hostage, Jake confronts Evelyn in her car. However, Evelyn’s explanation that the woman is her sister seems to satisfy Jake, as he can understand how a mix of embarrassment, obligation, and protectiveness would motivate Evelyn to conceal the fact her own sister had been having an affair with her husband. If the mistress is also Evelyn’s sister, it explains why Evelyn hasn’t been forthright with Jake about her complicated feelings about the situation.
Jake’s brief moment of respite from the increasingly bizarre case is interrupted by an unexpected call to meet with Ida Sessions, the woman who’d posed as Evelyn Mulwray at the beginning of the film. He arrives at her house in the morning to find her body lying dead on the floor and Escobar and another cop waiting in the house, ready to question Jake about his involvement in the case. Admitting that Hollis was murdered—confirmed by the fact the autopsy revealed he had salt water in his lungs despite having supposedly drowned himself at a freshwater reservoir—Escobar threatens Jake with charges of withholding evidence if he doesn’t bring Evelyn in for questioning, as Escobar believes she knows more about Hollis’s death than she is letting on.
However, when Jake goes to Evelyn’s house, he discovers that the maid is preparing the home for a period of dormancy by putting dust cloths on the furniture. Out back, Jake speaks again with the Japanese gardener. This time, he realizes he is mishearing the man, whose r sounds like an l. The man had been muttering about the saltwater pond being bad for the grass that surrounds it. Upon learning the pond is full of salt water, Jake remembers what Escobar said about Hollis having salt water in his lungs. Jake then recovers a pair of broken glasses from the water. With this evidence, he believes he can conclude that someone drowned Hollis in the pond. And if he was murdered at home, Evelyn must have been involved.
