Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

“Is he still downtown?” Padilla said.

“I guess so.” The boy came up to the fence. His fluorescent shirt made him look like a torso miraculously suspended, until I saw his eyeballs reflecting the light. “You cops?”

“We’re friends of Manuel Donato’s,” Padilla said.

“He may be down at the police station. A cop came a few minutes ago, and Manuel went away with him. Is he in trouble?”

“I hope not,” Padilla said.

“Reason I asked, it looked like he was crying.”

“Yeah,” one of the girls said from the shadows. “He was crying. I felt sorry for him.”

The desk sergeant at the police station told us the reason for Manuel Donato’s grief. His brother Gus was in the morgue. Pike Granada had shot him.

“Just like that, eh?” Padilla said.

The desk sergeant looked at him thoughtfully, then at me. “You representing the family, Mr. Gunnarson?”

I pretended not to hear him. “When did all this happen?”

“Within the last hour or so. It wasn’t channeled through me,” he said with disappointment. “Pike was off duty. He got a tip where Donato was hiding out. He’s young and eager.”

“Who tipped him?”

“Ask him yourself. He’s back in the squad room making up his preliminary report. He probably won’t tell you, but go ahead and ask him.”

The squad room was dim except for the circle of light from the lamp on Granada’s desk. His two-fingered typewriter stuttered and gave up when we walked in. He lifted his head, heavily, as if it had been cast in the bronze it resembled.

“I understand you shot Augustine Donato.”

“Yeah. He went for his gun.”

“Too bad you had to silence him. He might have told us some useful things.”

“You sound like Wills. He just got off my back. Don’t you climb on, Mr. Gunnarson.” He peered through the dimness at Padilla. “Who’s your friend?”

“You remember me,” Padilla said.

“I used to tend bar in the Rosarita Room.”

“Oh, yeah. Tony. Still working around town?”

“At the Foothill Club,” Padilla said in his formal voice. There was tension between the two men.

“Where did you catch up with Donato?” I said.

“In the old ice plant out by the railroad tracks. It’s a good place to hide, truck and all, and I figured he was out there.”

“That’s pretty close figuring.”

“I had some help. A little bird told me they seen a truck. I live on that side of town, so I mosied over. I caught him unloading the stuff.”

“What stuff was it?”

“Loot from the burglaries, cameras and furs and dresses. Apparently Broadman had it stashed in his basement. Donato killed him to get at it.”

“Then you killed Donato.”

“It was my neck or his.” In the light from the green-shaded lamp, Granada’s face was greenish, his eyes gold. “You sound as if you wished it was my neck. I’m not asking for the rubber medal, but I did go out on my own time and take a killer.”

“His wife claims he’s not a killer.”

“Naturally. She’s been claiming he’s innocent through four or five arrests. He’s been innocent of everything from pushing dope on the high-school grounds to armed robbery. So now he’s innocent of murder.”

“Innocent and dead.”

Granada looked up quickly, his eyes glinting like coins. “You don’t take her seriously, for Christ sake? She’s been lying her head off for years.”

“You ought to know,” Padilla said.

Granada rose slowly, about three feet wide in his linen suit, and well over six feet tall. He leaned with both hands gripping the edges of the desk. He appeared to be getting ready to pick up the desk and throw it. “What is that supposed to mean? I used to run with lots of dames before I got wise to myself and settled down.”

“Her husband is the only one you shot,” Padilla said. “Was she the little bird?”

Granada said in a very gentle tone: “Mother told me there would be nights like this. I go out of my way to take a killer, and what happens? The Lieutenant eats me out. People come in off the street to tell me off.”

Padilla said: “I’ll bring you a crying towel.”

Granada called him a bad name and lifted his hand. A woman scurried and moaned in the hallway. Then she shrieked in the doorway. Granada looked at the lockers along the wall as though he was considering hiding in one.

“Who let her in, for Christ sake?”

Secundina Donato ran at him, stumbling and sobbing. One of her stockings was down around her ankles.

“Murderer! I knew you would kill him. I warned him. I warn you now. Look out for me.”

Granada was. He kept the desk between them.

“Calm down, now, Sexy. You threaten an officer, I got to lock you up.”

“Lock me up! Kill me! Put me in the morgue with Gus!”

She went on in Spanish, pouring a torrent of words at Granada. She tore her dress at the neck and scratched her breast with chipped carmine fingernails.

“Don’t do that,” Granada said helplessly. “You’ll hurt yourself. You don’t want to hurt yourself.”

He moved around the desk and caught her by the wrists. She sank her teeth in his hand. Granada shook her loose. She backed up to the row of lockers and sat down against them with a crash.

Granada looked at his bitten hand. It was his gun hand, and the trigger finger was dripping blood. Nursing it in his other hand, he went into the washroom.

Padilla stood over the woman. “Get up, Secundina. I’ll take you home before you get into worse trouble.”

She covered her head with her skirt.

“At least she isn’t Granada’s little bird.”

“I’m not so sure, Mr. Gunnarson. Women can do one thing and mean something else.”

“Not this time. Don’t let that psychology kick get the best of you, Tony. What did she say to Granada in Spanish?”

He regarded me coldly. “I don’t remember my Spanish so good. We always talk American at home. Besides, she was talking bracero . Her old man was a wetback.”

“Come on, Tony, don’t play dumb.”

He was embarrassed by her presence. He waved me to the far side of the room and said with the air of a schoolboy reciting a lesson: “She said that Gus was very good-looking, better-looking than Granada even when-even now that he’s dead. She said she would rather have Gus dead than Granada alive. She said that Gus didn’t kill Broadman, and he didn’t steal from him, either. The stuff he took from Broadman belonged to Gus, and the Holy Mother would see to it Gus got his rights in Heaven. She said she was looking forward to the day when Gus and her would be looking down from Heaven and see Granada burning in Hell, so they could take turns spitting.”

Padilla’s embarrassment had become acute. “That’s the way they talk when they get roused up.”

Granada came out of the washroom. He groaned when he saw the woman sitting on the floor with head hidden and thighs glaring. He pointed his band-aided forefinger at her. “Get her out of here before I book her.”

She wouldn’t move for me. I was a lawyer, subtler than policemen, as treacherous as doctors. Padilla brushed me aside politely. He lifted and wheedled her up to her feet, coaxed and propelled her into the corridor and along its gauntlet of official doors.

“What happened?” the desk sergeant asked me.

“She bit Granada.”

“Did she, now?”

THE DOOR OF OUR APARTMENT opened directly into the living room. Sally was curled up asleep in the corner of the chesterfield. She had on the quilted bathrobe which I had given her for her twenty-third birthday. Her brushed hair shone like gold in the dim light of the turned-down lamp.

I stood and looked at her. She stirred in her sleep, and made a small quiet noise. It reminded me of an infant’s gurgle. Except for the pearlike curve of her body, and the swelling breasts that threatened to burst her robe, she looked about twelve. I was kind of glad she wasn’t.