Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘In the medicine cabinet,’ he said with a drifting, spent breath.

‘Put your hands behind your head.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll regret this.’ He put his hands behind his head.

I got to the far side of the desk, opened the drawer his hand had wanted to reach, took an automatic out of it. I put the blackjack away, went back round the desk to the medicine cabinet on the wall. There was a pint bottle of bond bourbon in it, three glasses. I took two of them.

I poured two drinks. ‘You first, warden.’

‘I... I don’t drink. I’m a total abstainer,’ he muttered, his hands still behind his head.

I took the blackjack out again. He put a hand down quickly, gulped from one of the glasses. I watched him. It didn’t seem to hurt him. I smelled my dose, then put it down my throat. It worked, and I had another, then slipped the bottle into my coat pocket.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Who put me in here? Shake it up. I’m in a hurry.’

He hunched his shoulders down in the chair. He looked sick. ‘A man named Galbraith signed as complaining witness. Strictly legal, I assure you. He is a police officer.’

I said, ‘Since when can a cop sign as complaining witness on a psycho case?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Who gave me the dope in the first place?’

‘I wouldn’t know that. I presume it has been going on a long time.’

I felt my chin. ‘All of two days,’ I said. ‘They ought to have shot me. Less kick-back in the long run. So long, warden.’

As I went out he still had his hands behind his head.

Chief of Police Fulwider was a hammered-down, fattish heavyweight, with restless eyes and that shade of red hair that is almost pink. It was cut very short and his pink scalp glistened among the pink hairs. He wore a fawn-coloured flannel suit with patch pockets and lapped seams, cut as every tailor can’t cut flannel.

He shook hands with me and turned his chair sideways and crossed his legs. That showed me French lisle socks at three or four dollars a pair, and hand-made English walnut brogues at fifteen to eighteen, Depression prices.

I figured that probably his wife had money.

‘Ah,’ he said, chasing my card over the glass top of his desk, ‘down here on a job?’

‘A little trouble,’ I said. ‘You can straighten it out, if you will.’

He stuck his chest out, waved a pink hand and lowered his voice a couple of notches.

‘Trouble,’ he said, ‘is something our little town don’t have a lot of. Our little city is small, but very, very clean. I look out of my west window and I see the Pacific Ocean. Nothing cleaner than that. On the north Arguello Boulevard and the foothills. On the east the finest little business section you would want to see and beyond it a paradise of well-kept homes and gardens. On the south — if I had a south window, which I don’t have — I would see the finest little yacht harbour in the world, for a small yacht harbour.’

‘I brought my trouble with me,’ I said: ‘That is, some of it. The rest went on ahead. A girl named Isobel Snare ran off from home in the big city and her dog was seen here!’ I found the dog, but the people who had the dog went to a lot of trouble to sew me up.’

‘Is that so?’ the Chief asked absently. His eyebrows crawled around on his forehead. I wasn’t sure whether I was kidding him or he was kidding me. He had a right-looking bottle and two pony glasses on the desk, and a handful of cardamom seeds.

We had a drink and he cracked three or four of the cardamom seeds and we chewed them and looked at one another.

‘Just tell me about it,’ he said then. ‘I can take it now.’

‘Did you ever hear of a guy called Farmer Saint?’

‘Did I?’ He banged his desk and the cardamom seeds jumped. ‘Why, there’s a thousand reward on that bimbo. A bank stick-up, ain’t he?’

I nodded, trying to look behind his eyes without seeming to. ‘He and his sister work together. Diana is her name. They dress up like country folks and smack down small town banks, state banks. That’s why he’s called Farmer Saint. There’s a grand on the sister too.’

‘I would certainly like to put the sleeves on that pair,’ the Chief said firmly.

‘Then why the hell didn’t you?’ I asked him.

He didn’t quite hit the ceiling, but he opened his mouth so wide I was afraid his lower jaw was going to fall in his lap. His eyes stuck out like peeled eggs. He shut his mouth with all the deliberation of a steam-shovel. It was a great act, if it was an act.

‘Say that again,’ he whispered.

I opened a folded newspaper I had with me and pointed to a column.

‘Look at this Sharp killing. Your local paper didn’t do so good on it. It says some unknown rang the department and the boys ran out and found a dead man in an empty house. That’s a lot of noodles. I was there. Farmer Saint and his sister were there. Your cops were there when we were there.’

‘Treachery!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Traitors in the department.’ His face was now as grey as arsenic flypaper. He poured two more drinks, with a shaking hand. It was my turn to crack the cardamom seeds.

He put his drink down in one piece and lunged for a mahogany call box on his desk. I caught the name Galbraith.

We didn’t wait very long, but long enough for the Chief to have two more drinks. His face got a better colour.

Then the door opened and the big red-faced dick who had sapped me loafed through it, with a bulldog pipe clamped in his teeth and his hands in his pockets. He shouldered the door shut, leaned against it casually.

I said, ‘Hullo, Sarge.’

He looked at me as if he would like to kick me in the face and not have to hurry about it.

‘Badge!’ the fat Chief yelled. ‘Badge! Put it on the desk. You’re fired!’

Galbraith went over to the desk slowly and put an elbow down on it, put his face about a foot from the Chief’s nose.

‘What was that crack?’ he asked thickly.

‘You had Farmer Saint under your hand and let him go,’ the Chief yelled. ‘You and that saphead Duncan. You let him stick a shotgun in your belly and get away. You’re through. Fired. You ain’t got no more job than a canned oyster. Gimme your badge!’

‘Who the hell is Farmer Saint?’ Galbraith asked, unimpressed, and blew pipe smoke in the Chief’s face.

‘He don’t know,’ the Chief whined at me. ‘He don’t know. That’s the kind of material I got to work with.’

‘What do you mean, work?’ Galbraith enquired loosely.

The fat Chief jumped as though a bee had stung the end of his nose. Then he doubled a meaty fist and hit Galbraith’s jaw with what looked like a lot of power. Galbraith’s head moved about half an inch.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’ll bust a gut and then where would the department be?’

Fulwider looked at me, to see how the show was going over. I had my mouth open and a blank expression on my face, like a farm boy at a Latin lesson.

Galbraith stuck a thick leg over a corner of the desk and knocked his pipe out, reached for the whisky and poured himself a drink in the Chief’s glass. He wiped his lips, grinned. When he grinned he opened his mouth wide, and he had a mouth a dentist could have got both hands in, up to the elbows.

He said calmly to me, ‘When me and Dune crash the joint you was cold on the floor and the lanky guy was over you with a sap. The broad was on a window seat, with a lot of newspapers around her. OK. The lanky guy starts to tell us some yam when a dog begins to howl out back and we look that way and the broad slips a sawn-off 12-gauge out of the newspapers and shows it to us. Well, what could we do except be nice? She couldn’t have missed and we could. So the guy gets more guns out of his pants and they tie knots around us and stick us in a cupboard that has enough chloroform in it to make us quiet, without the ropes. After a while we hear ’em leave, in two cars. When we get loose the stiff has the place to hisself. So we fudge it a bit for the papers. We don’t get no new line yet. How’s it tie to yours?’