Ross Macdonald - The drowning pool

“Nice place,” I said. “What are you drinking?”

His answer surprised me: “Uh-uh. This is on me. You treat me like a gentleman, I treat you like a gentleman, see?”

He turned and smiled wide, full in my face, and I had my first chance to study him. The teeth were white, the black eyes frank and boyish, the lines of the features firm and clean. Reavis had quantities of raw charm. But underneath it there was something lacking. I could talk to him all night and never find his core, because he had never found it.

He offered the smile too long; something for sale. I put a cigarette in my mouth. “Hell, you just lost your job. I’ll buy the drinks.”

“There are plenty of jobs,” he said. “But buy ’em if you want. I drink Bushmill’s Irish whisky myself.”

I was reaching for a match when a lighter flicked under my nose and lit my cigarette. The bartender had approached us noiselessly, a middle-sized man with a smooth hairless head and a lean ascetic face. “Good evening, Pat,” he said without expression, replacing the lighter in the pocket of his white jacket. “What are you gentlemen drinking?”

“Bushmill’s for him. A whisky sour for me.”

He nodded and moved away, narrow-hipped and poised as a ballet-dancer.

“Tony’s a cold-blooded bastard,” Reavis said. “He’ll take your money for six months and then cut you off with a cup of coffee if he thinks you’re eighty-six. Now I’m not Jesus Christ—”

“Excuse my mistake.”

“You’re a right gee, Lew.” He smiled the big raw smile again, but he got to first names too quickly. “What do you say we pull the rag and have ourselves a time? I got me a neat blonde stashed over at Helen’s. Gretchen can find you a playmate. The night’s still young.”

“Younger than I am.”

“What’s the trouble, you married or something?”

“Not at present. I have to hit the road early tomorrow.”

“Aw, come on, man. Have a couple of drinks and you’ll feel better. This is a wide-open town.”

When our drinks arrived he took his quickly and went out through a swinging door named Gents. The bartender watched me sip my whisky sour.

“Good?”

“Very good. You didn’t spend your apprenticeship in Nopal.”

He smiled bleakly, as a monk might smile over the memory of an ecstasy. “No. I began at fourteen in the great hotels of Milan. I graduated before twenty-one to the Italian Line.” His accent was French, softened by a trace of native Italian.

“All that training so you can mix ’em for a gang of oilfield winos.”

“Nopal Valley is a fine place to make money. I bought this place for thirty-five thousand and in one year paid off the mortgage. Five years and I can retire.”

“In Italy?”

“Where else? You are a friend of Pat Reavis?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Be careful then,” dryly and quietly. “He is a very pleasant boy most of the time, but he can be very unpleasant.” He tapped the side of his lean skull. “There is something wrong with Pat: he has no limit. He will do anything, if he is drunk or angry. And he is a liar.”

“Have you had trouble with him?”

“Not me, no. I don’t have trouble with anybody.” I could see why in his face. He had the authority of a man who had seen everything and not been changed by it.

“I don’t have much trouble myself,” I said, “but thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

Reavis came back and draped a ponderous arm over my shoulder. “How you doing, Lew boy? Feeling younger now?”

“Not young enough to carry extra weight.” I moved, and his arm dropped away.

“What’s the matter, Lew?” He looked at the bartender, who was watching us. “Tony been running me down as usual? Never believe a dago, Lew. You wouldn’t let a dago spoil the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“I like Italians very much,” I said.

The bartender said slowly and clearly. “I was telling the gentleman that you are a liar, Pat.”

Reavis sat and took it. The lips drew back from his fine white teeth, but he didn’t say a word. I put a cigarette in my mouth. The lighter flicked under my nose before I could reach for a match.

Normally I objected to being waited on. But when a man was perfect in his role it was a pleasure to see him walk through it.

“Two more of the same,” I said to his slim impassive back as he walked away.

Reavis looked at me like a grateful dog. Which I was observing for rabies.

Two more drinks, which I paid for, restored Reavis’s opinion of himself and the use of his tongue. He told me how he was promoted in the field on Guadalcanal, to become the youngest captain in the whole Pacific. How the OSS heard of his prowess and gave him a hush-hush assignment tracking down spies and saboteurs. How the Saturday Evening Post offered him several thousand dollars for an article about his personal experiences, but he was sworn to secrecy and besides he had other sources of income. He told me he could walk a city block on his hands, and frequently did. He was going through an interminable list of the female friends he had served and sent on their way rejoicing, when someone came up behind me and tapped my shoulder.

A dirty fedora, dirty-gray eyes, a long probing nose with a slightly bulbous tip, a lipless mouth like the wrinkle formed by a scar. His face was lopsided in the bar mirror and still looked lopsided when I turned. The corners of his mouth had tobacco-juice stains.

“Lewis Archer?”

“Right.”

“I found your car down the street and I figured you were in one of the places along here. I’m Franks, Detective-Sergeant.”

“Parking trouble? I didn’t see any signs.”

The scar tore open and showed some yellow teeth. It seemed that Detective-Sergeant Franks registered amusement in this way. “Death trouble, Mr. Archer. The Chief phoned down and said to pick you up.”

“Mrs. Slocum,” I said, and I realized I’d liked her pretty well. Too often the human ones were the ones that got in the way.

“Now how would you know it was the old lady—”

“It’s not the young Mrs. Slocum then—James Slocum’s wife?”

“Naw, the old lady,” he said, as if that could be taken for granted.

“What happened to her?”

“Don’t you know? I thought maybe you’d know. The Chief says you’re the last one that seen her alive.” He averted his face coyly and spat on the floor.

I got up suddenly. His hand went to his right hip and stayed there. “What happened to her?” I said.

“The old girl got drowned. They found her in the swimming-pool a little while ago. Maybe she jumped in for fun, or maybe somebody pushed her. You don’t go swimming at night with all your clothes on. Not if you can’t swim a stroke and got a weak heart in the bargain. The Chief says it looks like murder.”

I glanced at Reavis; and saw that his stool was unoccupied. The door marked Gents was oscillating slightly on its hinges. I moved for it and pushed it wide. At the far end of the passage the shadow of a big man moved in an open doorway and disappeared. Simultaneously a gun went off behind me and something jarred the door under my hand. A spent slug dropped to the floor at my feet among a shower of slivers. I picked it up and turned to face Franks, tossing the slug from hand to hand because it was hot. He advanced crabwise, with a service .45 steady in his hand.

“You coming peaceable, or do I shoot to maim this time?” The people in the room had formed a group behind him, a heaving body with twenty staring heads. Antonio, still and scornful, watched from behind the bar.

“Trigger-happy, Sergeant? Who gave a gun with real live shells in it?”