Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

I said: “What did he die of?”

“Search me. I’ve had a lot of experience, but I’m not a medical man. You’ll have to take it up with the doctors.” His tone implied obscurely that doctors could be wrong, and often were.

“The doctors don’t seem to understand the case. Can’t you give me the benefit of your experience?”

He glanced at me sideways, warily. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I want your opinion of what killed Broadman.”

“I’m not entitled to any opinion, I’m just a lackey around here. But it must have been those injuries at the back of his head.”

“Did Broadman sustain any other injuries?”

“How do you mean?”

“On the throat, for instance.”

“Heavens, no. He certainly wasn’t choked to death, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I’ll be frank with you, Whitey. It’s been suggested that Broadman was injured fatally after I found him in the store. Between the time that I found him and you took him away.”

“Who by, for goodness’ sake?”

“That remains to be seen. It’s been suggested that he was roughly handled.”

“No!” He was deeply shocked by the suggestion. “I handled him like a baby, with the upmost care. I always handle head injuries with the upmost care.”

“You weren’t the only one who had your hands on him.”

His eyes appeared to turn white. The flesh around them crinkled like blue crepe. He opened and closed his mouth, making noises like a hot-water bottle under stress.

“You wouldn’t be pointing a finger at my partner? Ronny wouldn’t hurt a fly. We been working together for years, ever since he got out of the Medical Corps. He wouldn’t even hurt a mosquito! I’ve seen him take a mosquito by the wings, pluck it right off his arm, and set it free.”

“Calm down, Whitey. I’m not pointing a finger at you or your sidekick. I simply want to know if you noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

“Listen, Mr. Gunnarson,” he complained, “I’m supposed to be monitoring police calls. The manager catches me out here batting the breeze-”

“If you saw anything, it won’t take long to tell me.”

“Sure, and get my own neck in a sling.”

“You can trust me to hold any information you have. It may be very important. It’s not just a matter of one man’s death, though that’s important enough.”

He pushed his fingers up into his hair and slowly closed his fist. His hair sprouted out like pale weeds between his fingers. “What do you want me to say? And who does it go to?”

“Just to me.”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Gunnarson. I do know what happens to me and my job if certain people get a down on me.”

“Name them.”

“How can I? What protection have I got? I’m no muscle man and I don’t pretend to be smart.”

“You’re not acting too smart. You seem to have evidence in a murder case, and you think you can sit on it until it explodes.”

He twisted tensely in the seat, turning his head away. His neck was thin and vulnerable-looking, like a plucked chicken’s.

“A man name of Donato murdered Broadman. I heard it on the radio. Can’t we just leave it like that?”

“Not if it isn’t true.”

“Donato’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Pike Granada shot him. You know Granada, don’t you?”

“Sure. I run into him in the course of work.” A tremor ran through his long, asthenic body. It was curled in the seat protectively, knees up. “You think I want to get myself shot, too? Leave me alone, why don’t you? I’m no hero.”

“I’m beginning to get the idea.”

All this time the radio had been murmuring in fits and starts. Now the rhythm of the dispatcher’s voice quickened. Whitey reached out and turned the radio up. It said that a new blue Imperial had been clocked at sixty proceeding east on Ocean Boulevard east of the pier.

I shouted above it: “Did Granada do something to Broadman?”

Whitey sat and pretended to be deaf. The dispatcher’s voice went on like the voice of doom. The Imperial had collided with a truck at the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Roundtable Street. Traffic Control Car Seven was directed to the scene of the accident. A few seconds later the dispatcher relayed a report that the driver was injured.

“You see?” Whitey cried aggrievedly. “You almost made me miss an accident.”

He started his engine, and honked softly. His fat little partner, the mosquito liberator, came running out of the garage. The ambulance rolled into the street and turned toward the foot of the city, singing its siren song.

I followed it. Colonel Ferguson had a blue Imperial.

THE LONG BLUE CAR had smashed its nose on the side of an aluminum semitrailer. A policeman was directing traffic around the damaged vehicles. At the curb, another policeman was talking to a tough-looking man in oil-stained coveralls. They were looking down in attitudes of angry sympathy at a third man who was sitting on the curb with his face in his hands. It was Ferguson.

Whitey and his partner got out of the ambulance and trotted toward him. I was close on their heels. Whitey said to the policeman in a tone of whining solicitude: “Is the poor fellow badly hurt, Mahan?”

“Not too serious. But you better take him to Emergency.”

Ferguson lifted his head. “Nonsense. I don’t need an ambulance. I’m perfectly all right.”

It was an overstatement. Worms of blood crawled down from his nostrils to his mouth. His eyes were like starred glass.

“You better go along to the hospital,” Mahan said. “Looks to me like you bust your nose.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ve broken it before.” Ferguson was a little high with shock. “What I need is a stiff drink, and I’ll be right as rain.”

Mahan and the ambulance men looked at each other with uneasy smiles. The man in coveralls muttered to no one in particular: “Probably had one too many already. He sure picked a hell of a time to run a red light.”

Ferguson heard him and lunged up to his feet. “I assure you I haven’t been drinking. I do assume full responsibility for the accident. And I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“I hope so. Who’s going to pay for the damage to the truck?”

“I am, of course.”

Ferguson was doing a fine job of setting himself up for a lawsuit. I couldn’t help interjecting: “Don’t say any more, Colonel. It may not have been your fault.”

Mahan turned on me hotly. “He was doing sixty down the Boulevard. He’s due for a pile of citations. Take a look at his skidmarks.”

I took a look. The broad black lines which Ferguson’s car had laid down on the concrete were nearly two hundred feet long.

“I’ve said I’m sorry.”

“It ain’t that simple, Mister. I want to know how it happened. What did you say your name was?”

I answered for him. “Ferguson. Colonel Ferguson is not obliged to answer your questions.”

“The hell he isn’t. Read the Vehicle Code.”

“I have, I’m an attorney. He’ll make a report to you later. At the present time he’s obviously dazed.”

“That’s right,” Whitey said. “We’ll take him along to the hospital, they’ll fix him up.”

He put his pale thin hand on Ferguson’s shoulder, like a butcher testing meat. Ferguson moved impatiently, stumbled on the curb, and almost fell. He glanced around at the growing circle of onlookers with something like panic in his eyes. “Let me out of here. My wife-” His hand went to his face and came away bloody.

“What about your wife?” Mahan said. “Was she in the car?”

“No.”

“How did the accident happen? What did you think you were doing?”