Росс Макдональд - The Three Roads

He caught a cab at the boulevard.

“Where to, bud?” the driver asked as he leaned back to open the door.

Paula’s address was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t give it. If he went to Paula they’d have the old argument over again. For all he knew there were a couple of male nurses waiting at her house to wrap him in wet sheets and ship him back to the hospital. No telling what lengths an anxious woman would go to. Certainly he’d have to phone her as soon as he got the chance.

The light had changed, and the driver threw in the clutch. “Which way?” he said impatiently.

Almost without thinking, Bret gave him the address of Harry Milne’s apartment. His choice of destination was easy to rationalize. All day he’d felt like an impostor in Milne’s clothes, a naval officer masquerading as a smalltime Hollywood character. He was convinced that he’d be able to think better when he got into his blues again. The meeting with his unexpected tenants had jolted him and set his mind revolving in interminable circles. Paula seemed to have a finger in all of his affairs.

When his taxi drew up in front of the long stucco building, he noticed a roadster, the same color as Paula’s, parked in front of it under a palm. No doubt she’d be here to anticipate him if she’d known he was coming, but even a woman’s intuition wasn’t as clairvoyant as that. When he had climbed the stairs to the second floor and found the door of Milne’s apartment, his doubt of her clairvoyance was shaken. A woman’s voice that sounded very much like Paula’s was speaking in angry tones on the other side of the door. He knocked at once, and the angry voice was hushed.

Henry Milne, large and confident in his shirt sleeves, opened the door carefully and stood blocking the aperture with his body. “Hello, I wasn’t expecting you.” He stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“I came to give you back your clothes.”

“They’re at the tailor’s,” Milne said quickly. “It’s got a sign, ‘Mac the Tailor,’ up that way, just around the corner to the right. You leave my suit with Mac, and I’ll pick it up later, eh? I’m busy right now, you know how it is.” He tried to wink gaily and conspiratorially, but there was no humor in his shallow, strained eyes.

In the face of this anxiety to get rid of him, Bret delayed his departure. “I’m grateful to you for helping me out,” he said blandly. “If I could–”

“Look, friend. I got a dame in here. You want to do something for me, you can blow. Leave my clothes at Mac’s. I trust you.”

His attitude was awkward and tense, with his right hand behind him on the doorknob. The door jerked open suddenly and almost threw him off balance. He shrugged his shoulders and stepped aside to make way for Paula.

“Bret! Where on earth have you been?”

She was as well groomed as usual, but her skin was pale and translucent and her eyes had a faintly mongoloid puffiness, as if she had spent a bad night. She wore a tall garish hat and a yellow wool suit in militant contrast to her mood.

“I’ve been around. Mr. Milne was good enough to lend me some clothes–”

“Mr. Milne?” She glanced at the man beside her, who was leaning with false nonchalance against the wall. It seemed to Bret that the look they exchanged was electric with hatred or some other emotion. “Oh,” was all she said, but her breath came out with the syllable and lent it a hissing quality.

“Look here, Lieutenant. You just shed the vestments at Mac the tailor’s like I said, and we’ll call it even.” He made a move toward the open door.

“Just a minute. I left my purse in there.” Paula stepped into the apartment ahead of him and came out a moment later with a yellow handbag. The door was shut behind her, and the bolt of the lock snapped home.

“What’s the matter with him? Did you accuse him of kidnapping me, or what?”

“How in hell did you get mixed up with that man?”

“It was perfectly natural,” he said unpleasantly. “I lost possession of my faculties last night, just as you might have expected, and he brought me home with him. But what brought you here?”

“I was looking for you. I was awake all last night–”

“You might have saved yourself the trouble. I admit my mental history has its blank spots, but I’m not exactly a character out of Krafft-Ebing.”

“It isn’t that, Bret. You told me you were going to look for the murderer. There are some terrible places in this city, some terrible people.” Involuntarily her eyes turned to the closed door. She took his hand and drew him along the hall.

He answered her as they descended the stairs: “Biologically, at least, I’m better equipped to deal with them than you are.”

“I don’t know whether you are, darling. I’m a woman, and my brain is ever so tortuous.”

“You haven’t explained how you got here.”

“Haven’t I?”

She said nothing more until he had paid off his taxi and was sitting beside her in her car.

“I know you don’t like me to do things like that, but you’ve no idea how miserable I was. I finally thought of going to that wretched café, and one of the bartenders knew that Miles – this man that took you home. Why didn’t you come to my house? I spent most of last week furnishing a room for you.”

“I’m sorry – sorry you were worried. I intended to phone you when Mrs. Berker told me you were looking for me.”

“You were there, then?”

“I wanted to see the house. I thought it was empty.”

“You don’t mind my letting them stay there? It was going to waste.”

“They can stay there forever as far as I’m concerned.” He leaned forward and looked soberly into her face. “You’re a pretty good woman, aren’t you? A generous sort of woman.”

“Am I?” She laughed lightly and uncertainly. “I suppose I feel I owe something to the people I’ve hated, even to their relatives.”

“Did you hate Lorraine?” He was painfully conscious that this was the first time her name had been spoken between them. The mere name seemed to add a dimension, a bitter edge of reality to their complicated situation.

“Yes, I hated her,” she answered bluntly. “Not since her death, but before, when she took you away from me.” She started the engine with a furious roar. “Damn you, you get me talking like somebody out of nineteenth-century drama! Can’t we stop thinking about Lorraine?”

“I can’t.”

The roadster was still at the curb, and she shifted to neutral and let it idle. She turned toward him in the seat and spoke to him in a small, coaxing voice he had never heard her use:

“You’ll come home with me now, won’t you? You have your appointment tomorrow. It’s funny to think it was only yesterday you left the hospital. It seems ages, doesn’t it?”

“You’ll have to cancel the appointment. I have other things to do. I’ve found out more in twenty-four hours than the police did in all those months.”

Her hand went to her mouth and hovered there as if to guard what she said. He had an impulse, which he failed to obey, to touch her face, smooth the fear out of it.

“What have you found out?” she said finally.

“I’ve found out that there was a man with her, definitely.”

“The police know that.”

“They haven’t got a description of him and a witness who can identify him. I have.” He gave her Garth’s description of his assailant. “The police don’t know anything about a man like that, do they?”

“No,” she said through her nervous fingers. “All they have are the fingerprints.” Abruptly she started the car and drew away from the curb.

“Wait. I have to change my clothes. He said the shop was around the corner to the right.”