Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

“That’s true. Particularly the people I meet in my work.”

“People like me?”

“I wasn’t thinking of you.”

“Oh? I thought you were stating a general policy,” she said with some irony, “to which everyone was expected to conform.”

A tall, wide young man with a crew cut and wearing a dark suit emerged from the shadows of the parking lot and headed for the hospital entrance. I called to him:

“Maclennan?”

“Yessir.”

I told Moira I’d be right back, and took Maclennan up in the elevator. “Don’t let anyone in,” I told him, “except hospital personnel – doctors and nurses – and the immediate family.”

“How do I know who they are?”

“I’ll get you started with them. The main thing I want you to look for is men, wearing white coats or not. Don’t let any man in unless he’s vouched for by a nurse or a doctor you know.”

“You expecting a murder attempt?”

“It could happen. You’re armed?”

Maclennan pulled back his jacket and showed me the butt of the automatic in his armpit. “Who do I look out for?”

“I don’t know, unfortunately. You have one other duty. Don’t let the boy run away. But don’t use a gun on him, or anything else. He’s what it’s all about.”

“Sure, I understand that.” He had a large man’s calmness.

I took him to the door of Nick’s room and asked the private nurse for Smitheram. The doctor opened the door wide as he came out. I caught a glimpse of Nick lying still with his eyes closed, his nose pointed at the ceiling, his parents sitting on either side of him. The three of them looked like something in a frieze, a ritual in which the raised hospital bed served as a kind of sacrificial altar.

The door closed on them silently. I introduced Maclennan to Dr. Smitheram, who gave us both a bored and weary look:

“Are all these alarms and excursions really necessary?”

“I think so.”

“I don’t. I’m certainly not going to let you plant this man in the room.”

“He’d be more effective there.”

“Effective against what?”

“A possible murder attempt.”

“That’s ridiculous. The boy’s perfectly safe here. Who would want to murder him?”

“Ask him.”

“I will not.”

“Will you let me ask him?”

“No. He’s in no condition–”

“When will he be?”

“Never, if you plan to bullyrag him.”

“ ‘Bullyrag’ is a loaded word. Are you trying to make me sore?”

Smitheram let out a clever little laugh. “If I were, I appear to have succeeded.”

“What are you sitting on, doctor?”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth talked very rapidly: “I’m standing – standing on my right and duty to protect my patient. And no junior G-men are going to talk to him now or ever, if I can help it. Is that clear?”

“What about me?” Maclennan said. “Am I hired or fired?”

I turned to him, swallowing my anger. “You’re hired. Dr. Smitheram wants you to stay outside in the corridor. If anyone questions your right to be here, tell them you’re employed by Nick Chalmers’s parents to protect him. Dr. Smitheram or one of the nurses will introduce you to the parents when it’s convenient.”

“I can hardly wait,” Maclennan said under his breath.

Moira wasn’t waiting downstairs or in my car. I found her eventually in a parking lot reserved for doctors’ cars. She was sitting behind the wheel of her husband’s Cadillac convertible.

“I got tired of waiting,” she said lightly. “I thought I’d test your investigative skills.”

“This is a hell of a time to be playing hide-and-seek.”

My voice must have been rough. She closed her eyes in reaction. Then she climbed out of the convertible. “I was only kidding. But not really. I wanted to see if you would look for me.”

“I looked. Okay?”

She took my arm and shook it gently. “You’re still angry.”

“I’m not angry at you. It’s your goddam husband.”

“What did Ralph do now?”

“He pulled rank on me and called me a junior G-man. That’s the personal part. The other part is more serious. He refused to let me talk to Nick, now or ever. If I could have just five minutes with Nick, I could clear up a lot of points.”

“I hope you’re not asking me to take it up with Ralph?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to be caught in the middle between you.”

“If you don’t want that,” I said, “you better go and find a better place to hide.”

She looked up at me slantwise. I caught a glint of her naked self, shy and mercurial and afraid of being hurt. “Did you mean that? You want me to get lost?”

I took hold of her and answered her without words. After a minute, she broke away.

“I’m ready to go home now. Are you?”

I said I was, but I wasn’t quite. My feeling about Smitheram, anger deepened now by suspicion, got in the way of my feeling for his wife. And it started me thinking along less pleasant lines: the possibility that I might use her to get back at him, or get at him. I pushed these thoughts away but they crouched like unwanted children in the shadows, waiting for the lights to be turned out.

We headed north on the highway. Moira noticed my preoccupation. “If you’re tired I can drive.”

“It’s not that kind of tired.” I tapped my skull. “I have a few problems to work through, and my computer is a fairly early pre-binary model. It doesn’t say yes and no. It says mainly maybe.”

“About me?”

“About everything.”

We rode in silence past San Onofre. The great sphere of the atomic reactor loomed in the darkness like a dead and fallen moon. The actual moon hung in the sky above it.

“Is this computer of yours programmed for questions?”

“Some questions. Others put it completely out of whack.”

“Okay.” Moira’s voice became soft and serious. “I think I know what’s on you mind, Lew. You gave it away when you said five minutes with Nick could clear up everything.”

“Not everything. A lot.”

“You think he killed all three of them, don’t you? Harrow and poor Mrs. Trask and the man in the railroad yards?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me what you really think.”

“What I really think is maybe. I’m reasonably sure he killed the man in the railroad yards. I’m not sure about the others, and I’m getting less sure all the time. Right now I’m going on the assumption that Nick was framed for the others and may know who framed him. Which means he may be next.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to come with me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I felt it, though. Look, if you feel you have to turn around and go back there, I’ll understand.” She added: “I can always leave my body to medical science. Or put in an application for equal time.”

I laughed.

“It’s not so funny,” Moira said. “Things keep happening, and the world keeps moving so fast, it’s hard for a woman to compete.”

“Anyway,” I said, “there’s no point in going back. Nick is well guarded. He can’t get out, and nobody can get in.”

“Which takes care of both your maybes, doesn’t it?”

We were silent for a long time. I would have liked to question her at length, about both Nick and her husband. But if I started to use the woman and the occasion, I’d be using a part of myself and my life that I tried to keep unused: the part that made the difference between me and a computer, or a spy.

The unasked questions simmered down after a while, and my mind hung loose in silence. The sense of living inside the case, which I sometimes used as a drug to keep me going, slowly left me.