Ross MACDONALD - Sleeping Beauty

I noticed them because they made a strange pair. One of them was young, the other was old and shaky. But they didn’t give the impression of being father and son. They didn’t even look as if they had come from the same world.

The old man was almost hairless, with livid head scars which ran down the side of his face and puckered it. He had on an old gray tweed suit which looked tailor-made. But his slight body was almost lost in it. I guessed that the suit had been made for another man, or perhaps for himself when he was younger and larger. He moved like a man lost in the world, lost in time.

The younger man wore Levis and a black turtleneck sweater which emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. They were so wide that they made his head seem small. He noticed that I was looking at him, and returned the look. His eyes reminded me of certain losers I had known. They peered out at the world through reinforced windows which kept them in and other people out.

A heavy blonde woman in an orange dress took their money and rang it up on the cash register. The young man paid, and picked up the change. The man in the tweed suit took hold of his arm, in the manner of a blind man or an invalid with his nurse.

The blonde woman opened the door for them and, as if in answer to a question, pointed south along the beach.

When she brought me a menu, I asked her who they were.

“Never saw them before in my life. They must be tourists – they don’t know their way around the Point at all. We’re getting a lot of sightseers the last couple of days.” She gave me a sharp look. “You’re new here yourself. You wouldn’t be one of these troubleshooters they’re bringing in for the oil?”

“No. I’m just another tourist.”

“Well, you came to the right place.” She looked around the room possessively. “I’m Blanche, in case you were wondering. Something to drink? I always serve doubles; that’s the secret of my success.”

I ordered bourbon on the rocks. Then I made the mistake of ordering fish. It seemed to taste of oil. I left my dinner half eaten and went outside.

The tide was coming in more strongly now, and I was afraid that the oil would come in with it. It might be on the beaches by tomorrow. I decided to go for a farewell walk southward along the shore. That happened to be the direction the woman with the grebe had taken.

The sunset spilled on the water and flared across the sky.

The sky changed through several colors and became a soft crumbled gray. It was like walking under the roof of an enormous cave where hidden fires burned low.

I came to a kind of natural corner where the shoreline curved out and a cliff rose abruptly from the beach. A few late surfers were waiting on the water for a final big one.

I watched them until a big one rose out of the darkening sea and brought most of them in. A cormorant flew across the water like an urgent afterthought.

I walked on for another half-mile or so. The beach was narrow and getting narrower, encroached on by the waves and crowded by the cliff. The cliff was fifty or sixty feet high at this point. Rough paths and precarious wooden stairways climbed here and there to the houses on its top.

I told myself I couldn’t get caught by the tide. But night was falling now, and the sea was rising to meet it.

A couple of hundred yards ahead of me, a scattering of boulders lay at the foot of the cliff and blocked the beach. I decided to walk that far and then turn back. There was something about the place that worried me. The cliff and the boulders at its base looked in the fading light like something seen for the last time.

A white object was lodged high among the boulders. When I got nearer, I could see that it was a woman and hear between the sounds of the surf that she was crying. She turned her face away from me, but not before I’d recognized her.

As I came near, she sat perfectly still, pretending to be an accidental object caught in a crevice.

“Is there something the matter?”

She stopped crying with a gulp, as though she had swallowed her tears, and turned her face away. “No. There’s nothing the matter.”

“Did the bird die?”

“Yes. It died.” Her voice was high and tight. “Now are you satisfied?”

“It takes a lot to satisfy me. Don’t you think you should find a safer place to sit?”

She didn’t respond at first. Then her head turned slowly. Her wet eyes gleamed at me in the deep twilight.

“I like it here. I hope the tide comes and gets me.”

“Because one grebe died? A lot of diving birds are going to die.”

“Don’t keep talking about death. Please.” She struggled out of her crevice and got to her feet. “Who are you anyway? Did somebody send you here to find me?”

“I came of my own accord.”

“You followed me?”

“Not exactly. I was taking a walk.” A wave came in and splashed against the boulders. I could feel the cold spray on my face. “Don’t you think we better get out of here?”

She looked around in a quick, desperate movement, then up at the cliff where a cantilevered house hung over her head like a threat. “I don’t know where to go.”

“I thought you lived in the neighborhood.”

“No.” She was silent for a moment. “Where do you live?”

“Los Angeles. West Los Angeles.”

Her eyes shifted as if she had made a decision. “So do I.”

I didn’t quite believe in the coincidence, but I was willing to go along with it and see where it led. “Do you have transportation?”

“No.”

“I’ll take you home.”

She came along without any argument. She told me that her name was Laurel Russo, Mrs. Thomas Russo. I said my name was Lew Archer. Something about the situation made me hold back the fact that I was a private detective.

Before we reached the end of the cliff where the beach curved, a high wave came up and soaked our feet and brought in the last surfer. He joined the others, who were squatting around a driftwood fire built under the brow of a natural cave. Their oiled faces and bodies gleamed in the firelight. They looked as if they had given up on civilization and were ready for anything or nothing.

There were other people on the beach, talking in low tones or waiting in silence. We stood with them for a little while in the semidarkness. The ocean and its shores were never entirely dark: the water gathered light like the mirror of a telescope.

The woman was standing so close to me I could feel her breath on my neck. Still she seemed a long way off, at a telescopic distance from me and the others. She seemed to feel it, too. She took hold of my hand. Her hand was cold.

The wide-shouldered young man in the black turtleneck whom I had seen in Blanche’s Restaurant had appeared on the wharf again. He jumped down onto the sand and came toward us. His movements were rather clumsy and mechanical, as if somebody had activated them by pressing a button.

He stopped and looked at the woman with a kind of menacing excitement. Still holding on to my hand, she turned and pulled me toward the road. Her grip was tight and spasmodic, like a frightened child’s. The young man stood and watched us go.

Under the streetlights, I got a good look at her. Her face seemed frozen, her eyes in deep dark shock. When we got into my car, I could smell her fear.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Honestly.”

“Then why are you afraid of him?”

“I’m just afraid, period. Can’t we leave it at that?”

“It wasn’t Tom Russo, was it? Your husband?”

“Certainly not.”

She was shivering. I kept an old raincoat in the trunk of my car, and I got it out and put it over her shoulders. She didn’t look at me or thank me.