Ross Macdonald - The drowning pool

The concussion of her palm against his cheek cracked like a twenty-two among the trees. His fist answered the blow, thudding into her neck. She staggered, and her sharp heels gouged holes in the sandy earth. When she recovered her balance, the gun was in her hand.

Reavis looked at it uncomprehendingly, and took a step toward her. “You don’t have to go off your rocker. I’m sorry I hit you, Elaine. Hell, you hit me first.”

Her whole body was leaning and focused on the gun: the handle of a door that had always resisted her efforts, and still resisted. “Stay away from me.” Her low whisper buzzed like a rattler’s tail. “I’ll put you on the Salt Lake highway and I never want to see you again in my life. You’re a big boy now, Pat, big enough to kill people. Well, I’m a big enough girl.”

“You got me all wrong, sis.” But he stayed where he was, his hands loose and futile at his sides. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“You lie. You’d kill me for the gold in my teeth. I seen you going through my purse this afternoon.”

He laughed shortly. “You’re crazy. I’m loaded, sis, I could put you on easy street.” He reached for his left hip pocket.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said.

“Don’t be crazy, I want to show you—”

The safety clicked. The door that had resisted her was about to open. Her whole body bent tensely over the gun. Reavis’s hands rose from his side of their own accord, like huge brown butterflies. He looked sullen and stupid in the face of death.

“Are you coming?” she said. “Or do you want to die? You’re wanted by the cops, they wouldn’t even touch me if I killed you. What loss would it be to anybody? You never gave nothing but misery to a single soul since you got out of the cradle.”

“I’ll go along, Elaine.” His nerve had broken, suddenly and easily. “But you’ll be sorry, I warn you. You don’t know what you’re doing. Anyway, you can put away that gun.”

I wasn’t likely to get a better cue. I stepped from behind my tree with my gun ready. “A good idea. Drop the gun, Mrs. Schneider. You, Reavis, keep up your hands.”

Her whole body jerked. “Augh!” she said viciously. The small bright automatic fell from her hand, rustled and gleamed in the leaves in front of her feet.

Reavis glanced at me, the color mounting floridly in his face. “Archer?”

I said: “The name is Leatherstocking.”

He turned on his sister: “So you had to bring a cop along, you had to wreck everything?”

“What if I did?” she growled.

“Hold it, Reavis.” I picked up the woman’s gun. “And you, Mrs. Schneider, go away.”

“Are you a cop?”

“This isn’t question period. I could haul you in for accessory. Now go away, before I change my mind.”

I kept my gun on Reavis, dropped hers into the pocket of my jacket. She turned awkwardly on her heels and went to the Chevrolet, her hard face kneaded by the first indications of regret at what she had done.

When she was gone, I told Reavis to turn his back. Terror yanked at his mouth and pulled it open. “You ain’t going to shoot me?”

“Not if you stand still.”

He turned slowly, reluctantly, trying to watch me over his shoulder. He carried no gun. A rectangular package bulged in his right hip pocket. He started when I unbuttoned the pocket, then held himself tense and still as I drew out the package. It was wrapped in brown paper. A melancholy sigh of pain and loss came out of him, as if I had removed a vital organ. I tore one end of the paper with my teeth, and saw the corner of a thousand-dollar bill.

“You don’t have to bother to count it,” Reavis said thickly. “It’s ten grand. Can I turn around now?”

I stepped back, slipping the torn package into the inside breast pocket of my jacket. “Turn around slowly, hands on the head. And tell me who’d pay you ten thousand dollars for bumping off an old lady with a weak heart.”

He turned, his blank face twisting, trying to get the feel of a story to tell. His fingers scratched unconsciously in his hair. “You got me wrong, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“If it was big enough to bite back, you wouldn’t.”

“I never had nothing to do with that death. It must of been an accident.”

“And it was pure coincidence you were on the spot when it happened.”

“Yeah, pure coincidence.” He seemed grateful for the phrase. “I just went out to say goodbye to Cathy, I thought she might come along with me, even.”

“Be glad she didn’t. You’d be facing a Mann Act charge as well as a murder rap.”

“Murder rap, hell. They can’t pin murder on an innocent man. She’ll give me an alibi. I was with her before you picked me up.”

“Where were you with her?”

“Out in front of the house, in one of the cars.” It sounded to me as if he was telling the truth: Cathy had been sitting in my car when I went out. “We used to sit out there and talk,” he added.

“About your adventures on Guadalcanal?”

“Go to hell.”

“All right, so that’s your story. She wouldn’t go along with you, but she gave you ten grand as a souvenir of your friendship.”

“I didn’t say she gave it to me. It’s my own money.”

“Chauffeurs make big money nowadays. Or is Gretchen just one of a string that pays you a percentage?”

He studied me with narrowed eyes, obviously shaken by my knowledge of him. “It’s my own money,” he repeated stubbornly. “It’s clean money, nothing illegal about it.”

“Maybe it was clean before you touched it. It’s dirty money now.”

“Money is money, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you two grand. Twenty per cent, that’s a good percentage.”

“You’re very generous. But I happen to have it all, a hundred per cent.”

“All right, five grand then. It’s my money, don’t forget, I promoted it myself.”

“You tell me how you did it, then maybe I’ll cut you in. But the story has to be a good one.”

He thought that over for a while, and finally made up his mind. “I’m not talking.”

“We’re wasting time, then. Let’s get moving.”

“Where you think you’re taking me?”

“Back to Nopal Valley. The Chief of Police wants some of your conversation.”

“We’re in Nevada,” he said. “You got to extradite me and you got no evidence.”

“You’re coming to California for your health. Voluntarily.” I raised the barrel of my gun and let him look into the muzzle.

It frightened him, but he wasn’t too frightened to talk. “You think you’re riding high, and you think you’re going to keep my money. All you’re gonna do is get caught in a big machine, man.”

His face was moist and pallid with malevolence. For less than a day he had been rich and free. I’d tumbled him back into the small time, perhaps into the shadow of the gas chamber.

“You’re going to take a ride in a little one. And don’t try for a break, Reavis, or you’ll limp the rest of your life.”

He told me to do an impossible thing, but he came along quietly to my car. “You drive,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the scenery.”

He drove angrily but well. We passed his sister just out of Boulder City. Nobody waved at anybody. We lost her in no time at all.

Back in Las Vegas, I directed him to the Green Dragon. He looked at me questioningly as he pulled up to the curb.

“We’re picking up a friend of mine. You come in, too.”

I slid out under the wheel, on his side, and crowded him with the gun in my pocket as we crossed the sidewalk to the screen door. I couldn’t trust Reavis to drive across the desert without an accident. I couldn’t risk driving myself.