Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“What’s he doing with himself?” she asked with the kind of hopeful interest that wasn’t betting too heavily on the answer.

“Nothing much.”

“I suppose he takes after his father. Jasper always had big dreams and nothing much to show for them afterwards.” She rotated one wheel of her chair and turned to face me. “If you know where David is, do you know where Jasper is?”

“No. And I don’t know where David is. I was hoping you could tell me how to find the ranch.”

“Sure, if it hasn’t blown away, the way that wind comes roaring down the wash. You know Rodeo City?”

“I’ve been there.”

“Go into the middle of town to the main corner, that’s the Rodeo Hotel with the sheriff’s office right across from it. Take a right turn there and drive out past the rodeo grounds and over the pass and inland about twenty miles, to a little settlement called Centerville. I taught school there once. From Centerville you drive north another twelve miles on a county road. It’s not too easy to find, especially after dark. Are you thinking of going there tonight?”

I said I was.

“Then you better ask in Centerville. Everybody in Centerville knows where the Krug ranch is.” She paused. “It’s strange how the generations of the family keep homing to that place. It’s a bad-luck place, I guess we’re a bad-luck family.”

I didn’t try to deny this. The little I knew of the family – Albert Blevins’ solitary life, the ugly fates of Jasper and Laurel fifteen years apart, Davy’s penchant for violence – only confirmed what Mrs. Krug had said.

She was sitting with her fists pressed against her body, as if she could feel the memory of labor. She shook her white head.

“I was thinking, if you see David, you could tell him where his great-grandma is. But I don’t know. I just have enough for myself. I pay six hundred a month here. Don’t tell him about me unless he asks. I wouldn’t want Jasper back on my hands again. Or Laurel. She was a sweet girl, but she turned out to be an ingrate, too. I took her into my home and did my best for her, and then she turned her back on me.”

“Was Laurel related to you, too?”

“No. She came from Texas. A very wealthy man was interested in Laurel. He sent her to us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to. I won’t tell on Laurel. She wasn’t my daughter or granddaughter, but I liked her better than any of them.”

She was whispering. The past was filling the room like a tide of whispers. I got up to leave.

Alma Krug gave me her knobbed, delicate hand. “Turn up the sound on your way out, please. I’d rather listen to other people talk.”

I turned up the sound and closed her door after me. Behind another door, halfway down the corridor, a quavering old man’s voice rose: “Please don’t cut me.”

The old man pulled the door open and came out into the corridor. His naked body was the shape of an elongated egg. He flung his arms around me, and pressed his almost hairless head into my solar plexus.

“Don’t let them cut me to pieces. Tell them not to, Momma.”

Though there was nobody else there, I told them not to. The little old man let go of me and went back into his room and closed the door.

IN THE RECEPTION HALL, the refugees from the war of the generations had dwindled to half a dozen. A middle-aged male orderly was quietly herding them back to their rooms.

“It’s bedtime, folks,” he said.

Jack Fleischer came in the front door. His eyes, his entire face, were glazed with weariness and alcohol.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Krug,” he said to the orderly.

“I’m sorry, sir. Visiting hours are over.”

“This is important.”

“I can’t help that, sir. I don’t make the decisions around here. The manager’s in Chicago at a convention.”

“Don’t tell me that. I’m a law-enforcement officer.”

Fleischer’s voice was rising. His face was swelling with blood. He fumbled in his pockets and found a badge which he showed to the orderly.

“That makes no difference, sir. I have my orders.”

Without warning, Fleischer hit the orderly with his open hand. The man fell down and got up. Half of his face was red, the other half white. The old people watched in silence. Like actual refugees, they were more afraid of physical force than anything.

I moved up behind Fleischer and put an armlock on him. He was heavy and powerful. It was all I could do to hold him.

“Is he a friend of yours?” the orderly asked me.

“No.”

But in a sense Fleischer belonged to me. I walked him outside and released him. He pulled out an automatic pistol.

“You’re under arrest,” he told me.

“What for? Preventing a riot?”

“Resisting an officer in the performance of his duty.”

He was glaring and sputtering. The gun in his hand looked like a .38, big enough to knock me down for good.

“Come off it, Jack, and put the gun away. You’re out of your county, and there are witnesses.”

The orderly and his charges were watching from the front steps. Jack Fleischer turned his head to look at them. I knocked the gun from his hand and picked it up as he dove for it. On his hands and knees, like a man changing into a dog, he barked at me: “I put you away for this. I’m an officer.”

“Act like one.”

The orderly came toward us. He was just a whitish movement in the corner of my vision. I was watching Fleischer as he got up.

The orderly said to me: “We don’t want trouble. I better call the police, eh?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary. How about it, Fleischer?”

“Hell, I am the police.”

“Not in this bailiwick you’re not. Anyway, I heard that you were retired.”

“Who the hell are you?” Fleischer squinted at me. His eyes gleamed like yellowish quartz in the half light.

“I’m a licensed private detective. My name is Archer.”

“If you want to stay licensed, give me back my gun.” He held out his thick red hand for it.

“We better have a talk first, Jack. And you better apologize to the man you hit.”

Fleischer lifted one corner of his mouth in a snarl of pain. For a spoiled old cop, having to apologize was cruel and unusual punishment.

“Sorry,” he said without looking at the man.

“All right,” the orderly said.

He turned and walked away with formal dignity. The old people on the steps followed him into the building. The door sucked shut behind them.

Fleischer and I moved toward our cars. We faced each other in the space between them, each with his back to his own car.

“My gun,” he reminded me. It was in my pocket.

“First we talk. What are you after, Jack?”

“I’m working on an old case, a fatal accident which happened years ago.”

“If you know it was an accident, why did you open it up again?”

“I never closed it. I don’t like unfinished business.”

He was fencing, talking in generalities. I tried to jolt him. “Did you know Jasper Blevins?”

“No. I never met him,” he said levelly.

“But you knew his wife Laurel.”

“Maybe I did. Not as well as some people think.”

“Why didn’t you get her to identify her husband’s body?”

He didn’t answer for quite a while. Finally he said: “Are you recording this?”

“No.”

“Come away from your car, eh, pal?”

We walked down the driveway. The overarching stone pines were like a darker sky narrowing down on us. Fleischer was more voluble in the almost total darkness.

“I admit I made a mistake fifteen years ago. That’s the only thing I’m going to admit. I’m not going to dig up the garbage and spread it all over my own front porch.”