Росс Макдональд - The Galton Case

I drove down the long grade and turned right along the asphalt road. A fire siren was ululating in the distance. The smoke above the burning car was twisting higher and spreading like a slow stain over the trees. Watching it, I almost ran down a man.

He was walking toward me with his head bent, as if in meditation, a thick young man with shoulders like a bull. I honked at him and applied the brakes. He came on doggedly. One of his arms swung slack, dripping red from the fingers. The other arm was cradled in the front of his sharp flannel jacket.

He came up to the door on my side and leaned against it. “Can you gimme a lift?” Oily black curls tumbled over his hot black eyes. The bright blood on his mouth gave him an obscene look, like a painted girl.

“Smash up your car?”

He grunted.

“Come around to the other side if you can make it.”

“Negative. This side.”

I caught the glint of larceny in his eyes, and something worse. I reached for my car keys. He was ahead of me. The short blue gun in his right hand peered at the corner of the open window:

“Leave the keys where they are. Open the door and get out.”

Curlyhead talked and acted like a pro, or at least a gifted amateur with a vocation. I opened the door and got out.

He waved me away from the car. “Start walking.”

I hesitated, weighing my chances of taking him.

He used his gun to point toward the city. “Get going, Bud. You don’t want a calldown with me.”

I started walking. The engine of my car roared behind me. I got off the road. But Curlyhead turned in a driveway, and drove off in the other direction, away from the sirens.

The fire was out when I got to it. The county firemen were coiling their hose, replacing it on the side of the long red truck. I went up to the cab and asked the man at the wheel:

“Do you have two-way radio?”

“What’s it to you?”

“My car was stolen. I think the character who took it was driving the one in the ditch there. The Highway Patrol should be notified.”

“Give me the details, I’ll shoot them in.”

I gave him the license number and description of my car, and a thumbnail sketch of Curlyhead. He started feeding them into his mike. I climbed down the bank to look at the car I’d traded mine in on. It was a black Jaguar sedan, about five years old. It had slewed off the road, gouging deep tracks in the dirt, and crumpled its nose against a boulder. One of the front tires had blown out. The windshield was starred, and the finish blistered by fire. Both doors were sprung.

I made a note of the license number, and moved up closer to look at the steering-post. The registration was missing. I got in and opened the dash compartment. It was clean.

In the road above, another car shrieked to a halt. Two sheriffs men got out on opposite sides and came down the bank in a double cloud of dust. They had guns in their hands, no-nonsense looks on their brown faces.

“This your car?” the first one snapped at me.

“No.”

I started to tell him what had happened to mine, but he didn’t want to hear about it:

“Out of there! Keep your hands in sight, shoulder-high.”

I got out, feeling that all this had happened before. The first deputy held his gun on me while the second deputy shook me down. He was very thorough. He even investigated the fuzz in my pockets. I commented on this.

“This is no joke. What’s your name?”

The firemen had begun to gather around us. I was angry and sweating. I opened my mouth and put both feet in, all the way up to the knee.

“I’m Captain Nemo,” I said. “I just came ashore from a hostile submarine. Curiously enough, we fuel our subs with seaweed. The hull itself is formed from highly compressed seaweed. So take me to your wisest man. There is no time to be lost.”

“He’s a hophead,” the first deputy said. “I kind of figured the slasher was a hophead. You heard me say so, Barney.”

“Yeah.” Barney was reading the contents of my wallet. “He’s got a driver’s license made out to somebody name of Archer, West Hollywood. And a statewide private-eye ducat, same name. But it’s probably a phony.”

“It’s no phony.” Vaudeville had got me nowhere except into deeper trouble. “My name is Archer. I’m a private investigator, employed by Mr. Sable, the lawyer.”

“Sable, he says.” The deputies exchanged significant looks. “Give him his wallet, Barney.”

Barney held it out to me. I reached for it. The cuffs clinked snug on my wrist.

“Other wrist now,” he said in a soothing voice. I was a hophead. “Let’s have the other wrist now.”

I hesitated. But rough stuff not only wouldn’t work. It would put me in the wrong. I wanted them to be in the wrong, falling on their faces with foolishness.

I surrendered the other wrist without a struggle. Looking down at my trapped hands, I saw the dab of blood on one of my fingers.

“Let’s go,” the first deputy said. He dropped my wallet in the side pocket of my jacket.

They herded me up the bank and into the back of their car. The driver of the fire truck leaned from his cab:

“Keep a close eye on him, fellows. He’s a cool customer. He gave me a story about his car getting stolen, took me in completely.”

“Not us,” the first deputy said. “We’re trained to spot these phonies, the way you’re trained to put out fires. Don’t let anybody else near the Jag. Leave a guard on it, eh? I’ll send a man as soon as we can spare one.”

“What did he do?”

“Knifed a man.”

“Jesus, and I thought he was a citizen.”

The first deputy climbed into the back seat beside me. “I got to warn you anything you say can be used against you. Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Cut Peter Culligan.”

“I didn’t cut him.”

“You got blood on your hand. Where did it come from?”

“Probably the Jaguar.”

“Your car, you mean?”

“It isn’t my car.”

“The hell it isn’t. I got a witness saw you drive away from the scene of the crime.”

“I wasn’t in it. The man who was in it just stole my car.”

“Don’t give me that. You can fool a fireman with it. I’m a cop.”

“Was it woman trouble?” Barney said over his shoulder. “If it was a woman, we can understand it. Crime of passion, and all. Shucks,” he added lightly, “it wouldn’t even be second-degree, probably. You could be out in two-three years. Couldn’t he, Conger?”

“Sure,” Conger said. “You might as well tell us the truth now, get it over with.”

I was getting bored with the game. “It wasn’t a woman. It was seaweed. I’m a seaweed-fancier from way back. I like to sprinkle a little of it on my food.”

“What’s that got to do with Culligan?”

Barney said from the front seat: “He sounds to me like he’s all hopped up.”

Conger leaned across me. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“All hopped up?”

“Yeah. I chew seaweed, then I orbit. Take me to the nearest launching pad.”

Conger looked at me pityingly. I was a hophead. The pity was gradually displaced by doubt. He had begun to grasp that he was being ragged. Very suddenly, his face turned dusky red under the tan. He balled his right fist on his knee. I could see the packed muscles tighten under the shoulder of his blouse. I pulled in my chin and got ready to roll with the punch. But he didn’t hit me.

Under the circumstances, this made him a good cop. I almost began to like him, in spite of the handcuffs. I said:

“As I told you before, my name is Archer. I’m a licensed private detective, retired sergeant from the Long Beach P.D. The California Penal Code has a section on false arrest. Do you think you better take the jewelry off?”