Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“What was the mistake, Jack?”

“I trusted that broad.”

“Did Laurel say it wasn’t her husband who died under the train?”

“She said a lot of things. Most of them were lies. She conned me good.”

“You can’t blame her for everything. It was your job to get the body identified.”

“Don’t tell me what my job was. In the thirty years I worked for the sheriff’s department, close to a hundred hoboes died under trains in our county. Some had identification on them, and some didn’t. This one didn’t. How was I to know it was different from the others?”

“What makes it so different, Jack?”

“You know damn well what makes it different.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve told you all I’m going to. I thought we could have a meeting of the minds. But you’re all take and no give.”

“You haven’t given me anything I can use.”

“You haven’t given me anything, period,” he said. “What’s your angle?”

“No angle. I’m working on the Stephen Hackett snatch.”

“The what?” He was stalling.

“Don’t kid me, you know about Hackett. You read about it in the San Francisco paper.”

He made a quarter-turn and faced me in the darkness. “So you’re the one that had me tailed in Frisco. What in hell are you trying to do to me?”

“Nothing personal. Your case and mine are connected. Jasper Blevins’s little boy Davy, the one who got lost in the shuffle, has grown up into a big boy. He took Hackett yesterday.”

I could hear Fleischer draw in his breath quickly, then let it out slowly. “The paper said this Hackett is really loaded.” It was a question.

“He’s loaded all right.”

“And Jasper Blevins’ boy is holding him for ransom?”

“There hasn’t been any talk of ransom, that I know of. I think he’s planning to kill Hackett, if he hasn’t already.”

“Christ! He can’t do that!” Fleischer sounded as if his own life had been threatened.

I said: “Do you know Hackett?”

“I never saw him in my life. But there’s money in it, pal. We should throw in together, you and me.”

I didn’t want Fleischer as a partner. I didn’t trust him. On the other hand, he knew things about the case that were unknown to anyone else alive. And he knew Santa Teresa County.

“Do you remember the Krug ranch, near Centerville?”

“Yeah, I know where it is.”

“Davy Blevins may be holding Stephen Hackett on the ranch.”

“Then let’s get up there,” Fleischer said. “What are we waiting for?”

We went back to our cars. I handed Fleischer his gun. Facing him in the semi-darkness. I had the feeling that I was looking at myself in a bleared distorting mirror.

Neither of us had mentioned the death of Laurel Smith.

WE AGREED TO DOUBLE UP in Fleischer’s car, which was new and fast. I left mine at an all-night station in Canoga Park, not too far from Keith Sebastian’s house. Whatever happened, I’d be coming back there.

I drove while Fleischer dozed in the front seat beside me. Up the San Fernando Valley, over the main pass, back by way of Camarillo to the dark sea. When we crossed the Santa Teresa County line, Fleischer woke up as if he could smell home territory.

A few miles south of Santa Teresa, as we were traversing a lonely stretch of highway, Fleischer told me to stop by a eucalyptus grove. I assumed it was a call of nature. He didn’t get out of the car, though, when I pulled off on the shoulder.

He twisted toward me in the seat and chopped at my head with the loaded butt of his gun. I went out, all the way. After a while the darkness where I lay was invaded by dreams. Huge turning wheels, like the interlocking wheels of eternity and necessity, resolved themselves into a diesel locomotive. I was lying limp across the tracks and the train was coming, swinging its Cyclops eye.

It honked its horn at me. It wasn’t a train sound, though, and I wasn’t lying on a track, and it was no dream. I sat up in the middle of the northbound lane of the highway. A truck lit up like a Christmas tree was bearing down on me, honking repeatedly.

Its brakes were shrieking, too, but it wasn’t going to be able to stop before it got to me. I lay down and watched it blot out the stars. Then I could see the stars again, and feel the blood pounding all through my body.

More traffic was coming up from the south. I crawled off the road, feeling small and awkward as a Jerusalem cricket. The eucalyptus trees muttered and sighed in the wind like witnesses. I felt for my gun. It was missing.

Fleischer’s treachery had touched a paranoid nerve which twanged and jangled in my injured head. I reminded it and myself that I had been ready to turn on Fleischer when it suited me to. His timing had been a little faster than mine.

By now the driver of the truck had pulled his rig off the road and set out a flare. He ran toward me with a flashlight.

“Hey, are you all right?”

“I think so.” I stood up, balancing the angry weight of my head.

He shone the flashlight in my face. I closed my eyes and almost fell under the slap of light.

“Hey, there’s blood on your face. Did I hit you?”

“You missed me. A friend of mine knocked me out and left me on the highway.”

“I better call the police, eh? You need an ambulance?”

“I don’t need anything if you’ll give me a lift to Santa Teresa.”

He hesitated, his face torn between sympathy and suspicion. The blood on my face cut two ways. Nice people didn’t get hurt and left on the highway.

“Okay,” he said without enthusiasm. “I can do that much for you.”

He drove me to the outskirts of Santa Teresa. The Power Plus station was still lit up, and I asked the driver to let me off there.

Fred Cram, the attendant with the special boot, was on duty. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I went into the men’s room and washed my face. There was a swollen cut above my temple, but it had stopped bleeding.

Someone had printed on the wall: MAKE SENSE NOT WAR. I laughed. It hurt my head.

I went outside and asked Fred Cram for permission to use the phone. He recognized me now.

“Did you find the girl?”

“I found her. Thanks very much.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Just let me use the phone, for a local call.”

The electric clock in the office had its hands straight up on midnight. Midnight was my time for calling the Längstens. I looked up their number in the directory, and dialed it. Henry Langston answered, in a muffled voice:

“Langston residence.”

“Archer. You’re going to hate me.”

His voice brightened. “I’ve been wondering about you. Davy is all over the local paper.”

“I think I know where he is, Hank. So does Fleischer – he’s on his way there now. Do you feel like another midnight drive?”

“Where to?”

“A ranch near Centerville in the northern part of the county.”

“And Davy’s there with Hackett?”

“I’d say there’s a fifty per cent chance of it. Bring a gun.”

“All I have is a .32 target pistol.”

“Bring it. And bring a flashlight.”

I told him where I was. While I was waiting outside the office, Fred Cram locked the pumps and turned out the overhead lights.

“I’m sorry,” he said to me. “It’s time to close.”

“Go right ahead. I expect to be picked up in a few minutes.”

But the young man lingered, eying my head wound. “Did Davy Spanner do that to you?”

“No. I’m still looking for him”

“That was him with the girl last night. I didn’t know him at first, he’s changed so much. But when I read about him in the paper – he really did have somebody in the trunk.”