Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

“Skip the paternal element,” Bret said harshly. “You don’t expect me to believe that.”

The melting face congealed in hypocritical shock. “You don’t accuse me–?”

“I said skip it. It turns my stomach.”

Garth wiped his face again. Bret could see the wet discoloration spreading through the soft silk collar that encircled the fleshy neck. Perhaps the room was hot, but he himself felt cool and bloodless. His heart pounded in his chest like a dry stick on a drum head. “Go on,” he said.

“Well, after a while I saw her go out. She was kind of unsteady on her legs, and I didn’t know if she’d be able to get home by herself. I followed her out and offered her a lift, and she accepted it. She didn’t complain about it, but I got the idea that she was feeling a bit sick. She was looking a bit under the weather. Anyway, I drove her straight home. The ride seemed to do her good, because when we reached the house she was looking much better. As a matter of fact, she graciously invited me to come in for a drink, and I, like a fool, accepted. When we were climbing the steps of the front porch a man came running out of the front door. Mrs. Taylor was a little ahead of me, and he pushed her out of the way and came at me. He was a big guy and terrifically strong. I tried to fight him off, but he sailed into me like a lunatic. He caught me off balance and knocked me backwards down the steps. When I tried to get up he jumped me again and knocked me down on the sidewalk. I’m no coward, Mr. Taylor, but I knew I was no match for him, so I ran out to my car and drove away.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“I thought of doing that, but you see they’re not such very good friends of mine. And you’ve got to remember my position, Mr. Taylor. I was perfectly innocent, but you’d never get anybody to believe that. You don’t believe it yourself, and there’s my proof. I’m a married man, and in a way I had no right to be there. I thought this man was her husband. He came out of her house like I said, and besides, when he pushed her she said something that made me think it was her husband.”

“What did she say?”

“I forget exactly. Something like ‘Take your hands off me, you bastard!’ Anyway, she talked as if she knew him. I thought sure it was her husband or I wouldn’t have run out like that. And naturally I would’ve called the police. But I didn’t catch on that it wasn’t her husband until I read about it in the paper next day and found out that her husband was an officer in the Navy. This guy was in civilian clothes.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was big, like you, I told you that, and I think he was pretty well dressed. I think he was kind of good looking, but I didn’t get much of a look at his face. It was pretty dark, and everything happened too damn fast. One minute I was flat on my back on the sidewalk, and the next minute I was in my car and lamming out of there.”

“It still seems funny you didn’t go to the police,” Bret said slowly.

“I explained that. I thought it was her husband.”

“But next day when you found out it wasn’t? When you read in the papers that she had been murdered?”

“I couldn’t go to the cops,” Garth whined. “Say I told them about this guy and they couldn’t find him. Where would I be then? I’ll tell you: halfway to the San Quentin gas chamber for a murder I didn’t commit but couldn’t prove I didn’t.”

“That’s where you are now, isn’t it? Are you sure this man that beat you up ever existed?”

“For Christ’s sake!” Garth said wildly. “Look at this if you don’t believe me.” He pointed to a long white seam just below and parallel to his right eyebrow. “I almost lost my right eye where the guy socked me. Half of my eyelid was flapping loose, and I had a lump on the back of my head as big as a goose egg.”

“I have scars too. They don’t prove anything.”

“All right! All right! I’ll prove it to you. Come over to L.A. with me. Right now?”

“What for?”

“I can prove that I’m telling you the truth. My face was bleeding so bad after that guy hit me I went straight to the nearest doctor, and he put eight stitches in my eye. Maybe you know him. Dr. Ralston? He lives only two or three blocks from your house.”

“I don’t. I never lived there. But we’ll go and see him. I’ve got a taxi waiting outside.”

Garth stood up and took a pearl-gray fedora from the top of the safe in the corner behind him. Sitting behind his desk, he had given the impression of size, but when he stood up Bret could see that he was short and stout, a nervous little man whose legs were stiff with fright.

Garth was jumpy and ill at ease in the taxi. He tried to start a conversation about his family, which Bret said nothing to encourage. When Garth finally subsided they rode in silence. Bret kept his face turned away from the other man and wearied his eyes with the monotony of the streets they were passing through. The houses were stucco or frame, one-storied almost without exception, sitting on narrow fifty- or sixty-foot lots that allowed room for a square of lawn in front and a clothesline and tiny garden at the back. The cramped houses, hardly more individual than a row of rabbit hutches, stretched under the noon sun in a cityscape of quiet resignation. Led on by the westering dream, he thought, the latter-day pioneers came from all over the country, all over the world, to homestead in the flat and empty finality of these streets.

“Caesar Street,” Garth said suddenly. “Say, that’s your street. That’s your house there, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” He twisted his head around and caught a glimpse through the rear window of the stucco bungalow Garth was pointing at. It looked like any other house he had never seen.

Garth looked curiously into his face. “Don’t you know your own home?”

“I told you I never lived in it. My wife bought it when I was at sea.” It occurred to him suddenly that he had seen the house before, the night Garth had been there. That night was still a blank to him. Everything he knew about it he knew at second hand, but that wasn’t Garth’s affair.

“Anybody living there now?”

“I don’t know.” But of course there wouldn’t be. “No, it’s empty.”

“I thought I saw a dame in the back yard, but I guess it was the next house.”

Soon afterward the driver let them out in front of a two-story frame house identified by a weather beaten wooden sign attached to the railing of the porch: “Homer L. Ralston, M.D.”

“It’s a good thing I saw that sign,” Garth said. “I was bleeding like a pig, and the doc said a blow like that can kill a man sometimes.”

A cardboard sign on the front door invited them to “Ring and Walk In.” The dingy waiting-room was lined with patients sitting stiffly under the cold eye of the nurse who presided at a table beside the door. She looked up as they entered.

“Yes?”

“We want to see the doctor,” Garth said.

“The doctor is very busy. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

“We didn’t come here for treatment,” Bret put in. “It’s a legal matter.”

She shrugged her starched shoulders in fussy resignation. “Sit down, please. I’ll see what I can do when he finishes with his patient.”

After a strained five minutes they were ushered into the consultation room. The doctor, a big, dull-faced man in his middle fifties, was sitting sideways at the desk.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he said without rising.

“You remember me, doctor?” Garth asked eagerly. “When you put some stitches in my eye last May?”

The doctor regarded him for a moment. “Let’s see, you came in here after office hours, didn’t you?”