Ross Macdonald - The drowning pool

He turned suddenly, raised his arms and swung me off balance. His fingers ground on my wristbones. His heavy shoulders labored. I would not turn in to his hold. His coat split up the back with a sharp report. I twisted my hand free, joined both hands under his chin, and set my knee in the small of his back. Gradually he straightened, came over backwards and down. The floor cracked against the back of his head, then the ceiling fell on the back of mine.

I came to, lying face down in darkness. The surface under my face seemed to be vibrating, and the same vibration beat savagely at the base of my skull. When I opened my mouth I tasted dusty cloth. Something heavy and hard pressed down on the small of my back. I tried to move and found that my shoulders and hips were tightly enclosed on both sides. My hands were tied together, pressed hard into my stomach. Coffin fear took me by the back of my neck and shook me. When the shaking subsided my head was clearer and more painful. I was on the floor of a moving car, wedged face down between the front and back seats.

The wheels bumped and slid across two sets of car tracks. I raised my head from the floor.

“Take it easy, buster,” a man’s voice said. One heavy object was removed from the small of my back and placed on the nape of my neck.

I said: “Take your feet off me.”

The foot on my neck shifted, pressing my face into the floor. “Or what will you do, buster? Nothing? That’s what I thought.”

I lay still, trying to memorize pitch, tone, inflection, so that I would not mistake them if I ever heard them again. The voice was soft and liquid in the way that molasses is liquid, with a fruity tremor of vanity running through it. A voice like the stuff cheap barbers put on your hair before you can stop them.

It said: “That’s right, buster, you can do your talking later. And you will.”

More car tracks. A left turn. Pitted city pavement. Another turn. The blood was roaring angrily in my ears. Then there was no sound but the roaring of my blood. The feet were lifted, a car door opened. I struggled upright to my knees and tore at my bound wrists with my teeth. They were bound with wire.

“Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don’t you feel it?”

I felt it. I took it easy.

“Backwards out of the car, buster. Don’t raise a hullabaloo or you’ll take another ride and never know it. Now you can stand up and let me look at you. Frankly, you look like hell.”

I looked at him, first at the steady black gun. He was slender and tall, pinched at the waist by over-elaborate tailoring, heavily padded at the shoulders. The hair on top of his head was thick and black and glossy, but it didn’t match the gray hair over his ears. I said: “You’re showing a little middle-aged sag yourself.”

He nicked me under the chin with the front sight of his gun. My head snapped back and I fell against the open door of the car, slamming it shut. The sound rang out along the deserted street. I didn’t know where I was, but I had the Glendale feeling: end of the line. No lights went on in any of the dark houses. Nothing happened at all, except that the man pressed his gun to my sternum and made threats like cello music into my face.

The other man leaned out of the front window. A little blood flowed from a cut over his right beetle. “You’re sure you can handle this screw?”

“It will be a pleasure,” the tall man said to both of us.

“Don’t mark him up unless he asks for it. We just want to get his story and put him on ice for a while.”

“How long?”

“You’ll hear in the morning.”

“I’m not a baby-sitter,” the tall man grumbled. “What about your place, Mell?”

“I’m going on a trip. Goodnight sweetheart.” The car went away.

“Quick march,” the tall man said.

“Goosestep, or plain?”

He put one heel on my instep and his weight on the heel. His eyes were dark and small. They picked up the light of a distant streetlamp and reflected it like a cat’s.

I said: “You’re very attractive for an elderly man.”

“Cut the comical chatter,” he said throatily. “I never killed a man, but by Jesus—”

“I have, Amy. He kicked me in the head when I was down.”

“Stop calling me Amy.” He backed away and held the gun higher. Without it he was nothing. But he had it.

I quick-marched up the cracked and slanting concrete to the porch. It was cavernous and sunken, a place of shadows. He kept his eyes and gun on me while he fumbled for his key-ring and snapped back the lock. A woman’s voice spoke from the shadows then:

“Is it you, Rico? I’ve been waiting for you.”

He turned catlike from the door, shifting his gun from me to the darkness behind me. “Who is it?” His voice was jangled.

I leaned on the balls of my feet, ready to move. The gun came back to me. The key-ring forgotten in the lock.

“It’s me, Rico,” the voice from the shadows said. “Mavis.”

“Mrs. Kilbourne!” Amazement raked his face, and his voice choked. “What are you doing here?”

“Mavis to you, tall and handsome. I haven’t been out by myself for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten how you looked at me.”

She moved out of the shadows past me as if I wasn’t there, immaculate in a high-shouldered ermine jacket. Her left hand was behind her with the forefinger extended. It curled and straightened, pointed at the floor.

“Be careful, Mrs. Kilbourne.” The man’s voice was wretched, straining to repress an impossible hope. “Please go home, Mrs. Kilbourne.”

“Won’t you call me Mavis?” She brushed the side of his face with a white-gloved hand. “I call you Rico. I think of you when I’m lying in bed at night. Aren’t you ever going to give me a break?”

“Sure I will, baby, only be careful. I’m holding a gun—”

“Well, put it away,” she said with coy petulance. She pushed the gun to one side and leaned heavily on him, her arms around his shoulders, mouth on mouth.

For an instant the gun wavered. He was still, enclosed by her in a white and perfumed dream. I raised my doubled fists and brought them down. Something snapped in his hand. The gun rattled on the floor. The woman went down after it, scurrying on her knees, and Rico went after her. My arms looped over his head, hugged him and lifted him. I held him suspended by the neck until his hands stopped scratching at me and dragged on the floor. Then I let him fall on his face.

The woman stood up with the gun. She held it in a gingerly way, as if it were a reptile. “You catch on quickly, Archer. That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Unknown admirer,” I said. “I didn’t realize I had this fantastic power over women.”

“Didn’t you? I knew when I saw you you were for me. Then I heard my husband telling them to bring you here. I came. What else could I do?” Her hands made a pretty gesture, spoilt by the gun.

“Unlike Rico,” I said, “I’m allergic to ham.” I looked down at the man at my feet. His toupee was twisted sideways, so that the straight white line of the part ran from ear to ear. It was funny, and I laughed.

She thought I was laughing at her. “Don’t you dare to laugh at me,” she said in a blind white rage. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Not if you hold the gun that way. You’ll sprain your wrist and shoot a hole in the roof. Now put it away and kiss your boyfriend goodnight and I’ll take you home. I suppose I should thank you, too? Mavis.”

“You’ll do as I say,” but her heart wasn’t in what she said.

“I’ll do as I think best. You hadn’t the guts to tackle Rico alone, and I’m a tougher proposition than Rico.”

She dropped the gun in her coat pocket and clasped her white silk hands below her bosom. “You’re right. I need your help. How did you know?”