Росс Макдональд - The Doomsters

“Terrible, isn’t it? What makes it worse, I know him.” She shivered, and hunched her thin shoulders up. “I talked to him just this morning.”

“Who?”

“The murderer.” She rolled the “r’s” like an actress in melodrama.

“He telephoned here?”

“He came here, personally. He was standing right here in front of me.” She pointed at the floor between us with a fingernail from which the red polish was flaking. “I didn’t know him from Adam, but I could tell there was something funny. He had that wild look they have in their eyes.” Her own look was slightly wild, in a girlish way, and she’d forgotten her receptionist’s diction: “Jeeze, it bored right through me.”

“It must have been a frightening experience.”

“You’re not kidding. Course I had no way of knowing he was going to shoot somebody, he only looked that way. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ he said, just like that. I guess he thought he was Napoleon or something. Only he was dressed like any old bum. You’d never think he was a Senator’s son. His brother used to come in here, and he was a real gentleman, always nicely dressed in the height of fashion – cashmere jackets and stuff. It’s too bad about him. I feel sorry for his wife, too.”

“You know her?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Hallman, she comes in all the time for her sinuses.” Her eyes took on the waiting birdlike expression of a woman naming another woman she happens not to like.

“Did you get rid of him all right?”

“The crazy-man? I tried to tell him doctor wasn’t in, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I called out Dr. Grantland, he knows how to handle them, Dr. Grantland hasn’t got a nerve in his body.” The birdlike expression subtly changed to the look of adoration which very young receptionists reserve for their doctor-employers. “ ‘Hello, old man, what brings you here?’ the doctor says, like they were buddy-buddy from way back. He put his arm around him, calm as anything, and off they went into the back room. I guess he got rid of him out the back way, ’cause that was the last I saw of him. Least I hope that’s the last. Anyway, doctor told me not to worry about it, that things like that come up in every office.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“Just three months. This is my first real job. I filled in for other girls before, when they went on vacation, but I considered this the real start of my career. Dr. Grantland is wonderful to work for. Most of his patients are the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.”

As though to illustrate this boast, a fat woman wearing a small flat hat and a mink neckpiece emerged through the inner door. She was followed by Grantland, looking professional in a white smock. She had the vaguely frightened eyes of a hypochondriac, and she clutched a prescription slip in her chubby hand. Grantland escorted her to the front door and opened it, bowing her out. She turned to him on the threshold: “Thank you so much, Doctor. I know I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

GRANTLAND CLOSED the door and saw me. The lingering smile on his face gave up the ghost entirely. Shoved by a gust of anger, he crossed the room toward me. His fists were clenched.

I rose to meet him. “Hello, Doctor.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I have an appointment with you.”

“Oh no you haven’t.” He was torn between anger and the need to be charming to his receptionist. “Did you make an appointment for this – this gentleman?”

“Why not?” I said, since she was speechless. “Are you retiring from practice?”

“Don’t try to tell me you’re here as a patient.”

“You’re the only doctor I know in town.”

“You didn’t tell me you knew Dr. Grantland,” the receptionist said accusingly.

“I must have forgotten to.”

“Very likely,” Grantland said. “You can go now, Miss Cullen, unless you’ve made some more of these special appointments for me.”

“He told me it was an emergency.”

“I said you can go.”

She went, with a backward look from the doorway. Grantland’s face was trying various attitudes: outrage, dignified surprise, bewildered innocence.

“What are you trying to pull on me?”

“Not a thing. Look, if you don’t want to treat me, I can find another doctor.”

He weighed the advantages and disadvantages of this, and decided against it. “I don’t do much in the surgical line, but I guess I can fix you up. What happened to you, anyway – did you run into Hallman again?” Zinnie had briefed him well, apparently.

“No. Did you?”

He let that go by. We went through a consulting-room furnished in mahogany and blue leather. There were sailing prints on the walls, and above the desk a medical diploma from a college in the middle west. Grantland switched on the lights in the next room and asked me to remove my coat. Washing his hands at the sink in the corner, he said over his shoulder: “You can get up on the examination table if you like. I’m sorry my nurse has gone home – I didn’t know I’d be wanting to use her.”

I stretched out on the leatherette top of the metal table. Lying flat on the back wasn’t a bad position for self-defense, if it came to that.

Grantland crossed the room briskly and leaned over me, turning on a surgical light that extended on retractable arms from the wall. “You get yourself gun-whipped?”

“Slightly. Not every doctor would recognize the marks.”

“I interned at Hollywood Receiving. Did you report this to the police?”

“I didn’t have to. Ostervelt did it to me.”

“You’re not a fugitive, for God’s sake?”

“No, for God’s sake.”

“Were you resisting arrest?”

“The sheriff just lost his temper. He’s a hot-headed old youth.”

Grantland made no comment. He went to work cleaning my cuts with swabs dipped in alcohol. It hurt.

“I’m going to have to put some clamps in that ear. The other cut ought to heal itself. I’ll simply put an adhesive bandage over it.”

Grantland went on talking as he worked: “A regular surgeon could do a better job for you, especially a plastic surgeon. That’s why I was a little surprised when you came to me. You’re going to have a small scar, I’m afraid. But that’s all right with me if it’s all right with you.” He pressed a series of clamps into my torn ear. “That ought to do it. You ought to have a doctor look at it in a day or two. Going to be in town long?”

“I don’t know.” I got up, and faced him across the table. “It could depend on you.”

“Any doctor can do it,” he said impatiently.

“You’re the only one who can help me.”

Grantland caught the implication, and glanced at his watch. “I’m late for an appointment now–”

“I’ll make it as fast as I can. You saw a pearl-handled gun today. You didn’t mention that you’d seen it before.”

He was a very quick study. Without a second’s hesitation, he said: “I like to be sure of my facts before I sound off. I’m a medical man, after all.”

“What are your facts?”

“Ask your friend the sheriff. He knows them.”

“Maybe. I’m asking you. You might as well tell a straight story. I’ve been in touch with Glenn Scott.”

“Glenn who?” But he remembered. His gaze flickered sideways.

“The detective Senator Hallman hired to investigate the murder of his wife.”

“Did you say murder?”

“It slipped out.”

“You’re mistaken. She committed suicide. If you talked to Scott, you know she was suicidal.”

“Suicidal people can be murdered.”

“No doubt, but what does that prove?” A womanish petulance tugged at his mouth, disrupting his false calm. “I’m sick and tired of being badgered about it, simply because she happened to be my patient. Why, I saved her life the week before she drowned. Did Scott bother to tell you that?”