Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

I explained who I was, and asked if I could see Heidi.

“My daughter isn’t here.”

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve sent her out of town to stay with relatives.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Gensler. The probation people will want to talk to her.”

“I don’t see why.”

“She’s a witness.”

His face and neck reddened. “She certainly is not. Heidi’s a nice clean-living girl. Her only connection with the Sebastian girl is that we happen to live on the same street.”

“It’s no disgrace to be a witness,” I said. “Or even to know someone in trouble.”

Gensler closed the door abruptly in my face. I drove my car up the street to Sebastian’s house, thinking that Heidi must have told her father something that frightened him.

Dr. Jeffrey’s Rover was parked in front of the house. When Bernice Sebastian let me in, I could see that her face reflected some further disaster. Its flesh was being eaten away from inside so that the bones had become more prominent: her eyes were like lights in a cage.

“What happened?”

“Sandy attempted suicide. She hid one of her father’s razor blades in her dog.”

“Her dog?”

“Her little cloth spaniel. She must have got the blade when she went to the bathroom. She tried to cut her wrist with it. Fortunately I was listening at the door. I heard her cry out and I stopped her before she hurt herself too terribly.”

“Did she say why she did it?”

“She said she didn’t deserve to live, that she was a terrible person.”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“No. I didn’t know what to say.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Just now. The doctor’s still with her. Please excuse me.”

It was her daughter, but my case. I followed her to the door of Sandy’s room and looked in. Sandy was sitting on the edge of her bed. She had a gauze bandage on her left wrist, a sprinkling of blood on the front of her pajamas. She had changed in other ways in the course of the night. Her eyes were darker in color. Her mouth was set hard. She wasn’t very pretty now.

Her father was sitting beside her, holding her hand in an unreal sort of way. Dr. Jeffrey was standing over them, telling them both that Sandy would have to be hospitalized:

“I recommend the Psychiatric Center in Westwood.”

“Isn’t that terribly expensive?” Sebastian said.

“No more so than other hospitals. Good psychiatric treatment is always expensive.”

Sebastian shook his head: his face swung loosely. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it. It was all I could do to raise bail money.”

Sandy lifted her heavy eyes. Barely moving her lips, she said: “Let them take me to jail. That doesn’t cost anything.”

“No,” her mother said. “We’ll sell the house.”

“Not on this market,” Sebastian said. “We wouldn’t even get our equity out.”

His daughter pulled her hand away from his. “Why didn’t you let me die? That would solve all the problems.”

“The hard way,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll order an ambulance.”

Sebastian got to his feet. “Let me drive her. Ambulances cost money.”

“I’m sorry, this is an ambulance case.”

I followed Jeffrey to the telephone in the study. He made his call and hung up.

“Yes?” His look was hard and questioning.

“How sick is she?”

“I don’t know. There’s been some slippage, obviously. But I’m not a psychiatrist. That’s why I want to get her to one right away. She needs security precautions.”

“You think she’ll try again?”

“We have to go on that assumption. I’d say she’s very likely to repeat. She told me she’s been planning this for months. She took some LSD last summer and had a bad reaction. She’s still not over it.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes. It may account for the change in her personality over the last few months. One dose can do it if it hits you wrong. She claims that’s all she had – one dose in a sugar cube.”

“Did she tell you where she got it?”

“No. Obviously she’s covering up for somebody.”

I got out the sugar cubes I’d taken from Lupe’s kitchen and handed one of them to the doctor. “This almost certainly came from the same source. Can you have it analyzed?”

“I’ll be happy to. Where did you find it?”

“In Lupe Rivera’s apartment. He’s the man she clobbered the other night. If I can prove that he fed her LSD–”

Jeffrey rose impatiently. “I get the point. Why don’t I ask her?”

We went back to Sandy’s bedroom where the little family sat frozen in each other’s company. The girl, who was in the middle, looked up at us.

“Did you send for the wagon to the booby hatch?”

“As a matter of fact I did,” Jeffrey said unexpectedly. “Now it’s my turn to ask you a question.”

She waited in silence.

“That sugar cube you took last August – did Lupe Rivera give it to you?”

“What if he did?”

The doctor put his hand under her chin, very gently, and tipped it up. “Did he? I want a yes or no answer, Sandy.”

“Yes. I freaked out. I blew my mind.”

“Did he do anything else to you, Sandy?”

She withdrew her chin from the doctor’s hand and hung her head. Her face was impassive, her eyes very dark and fixed. “He said he would kill me if I told anyone.”

“Nobody’s going to kill you.”

She looked at the doctor in disbelief.

“Did Lupe take you to Dr. Converse?” I said.

“No, Gerda – Mrs. Hackett – took me. I tried to jump out of the car on the freeway. Dr. Converse put me in a strait-jacket. He kept me in his clinic all night.”

Bernice Sebastian groaned. When the ambulance came for her daughter, she rode along.

I WENT BACK to the freeway, where I seemed to live. I was running out of initiative, and sorely tempted to go home. Instead I drove to Long Beach on the bleakest stretch of pavement in the world.

The Corpus Christi Oil building was a massive four-story structure overlooking the waterfront and its slums. I was born and raised in Long Beach, within walking distance of the waterfront, and I could remember when the building had been put up, the year after the earthquake.

I parked in a visitor’s slot and went into the lobby. Just inside the front door, a uniformed security officer sat behind a counter. When I gave him a second look I found that I knew him. He was Ralph Cuddy, who managed Alma Krug’s apartment building in Santa Monica.

He knew me too. “Couldn’t you find Mrs. Krug?”

“I found her, thanks.”

“How is she? I haven’t had a chance to visit her this week. My two jobs keep me humping.”

“She seems to be doing pretty well for her age.”

“Good for her. She’s been like a mother to me all my life. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“She has been.” His emotional gaze narrowed on my face. “What sort of family matters did you discuss with her?”

“Various relatives of hers. Jasper Blevins, for instance.”

“Hey, do you know Jasper? Whatever happened to him?”

“He died under a train.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cuddy said moralistically. “Jasper was always in trouble. He was a trouble to himself and a trouble to other people. But Alma was good to him anyway. Jasper was always her favorite.” His eyes grew small and grudging, in a kind of rivalry.

“What kind of trouble?”

Cuddy started to say something and then decided not to. He was silent for a moment, his face groping for an alternative reply.

“Sex trouble, for example. Laurel was pregnant when he married her. I almost married her myself, till I found out she was in trouble.” He added in mild surprise, as if he hadn’t thought of the fact for some years: “I never did marry. Frankly, I never found a woman worthy of my standards. I’ve often said to Alma Krug, if only I wasn’t born too late–”