Росс Макдональд - The Doomsters

Tom spoke to the doubt that must have showed in my face: “Give me back my needle. What’s to lose?”

“Not a chance.”

“Come on,” he wheedled. “The stuff is weak. The first shot didn’t even give me a lift.”

“Then you don’t have so far to fall.”

He beat his sharp knees with his fists. “Give me my needle, you hot-and-cold-running false-faced mother-lover. You’d steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes and sell his body for soap.”

“Is that how you feel? Dead?”

“The hell I am. I’ll show you. I can get more.”

He got up and tried to push past me. He was frail and light as a scarecrow. I forced him back onto the seat, holding the needle carefully out of his reach.

“Where did you get it in the first place, Tom?”

“Would I tell you?”

“Maybe you don’t have to.”

“Then why ask?”

“What’s this fine new racket of yours that you were warbling about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Pushing reefers to school kids?”

“You think I’m interested in peanuts?”

“Buying and selling old clothes?”

His ego couldn’t stand to be downgraded. The insult blew it up like a balloon. “You think I’m kidding? I got a piece of the biggest racket in the world. Before I’m through I’ll be buying and selling peanut-eaters like you.”

“By saving green stamps, no doubt.”

“By putting on the squeeze, jerk, where the money is. You get something on somebody, see, and you sell it back a little piece at a time. It’s like an annuity.”

“Or a death-warrant.”

He looked at me imperviously. Dead men never die.

“The good doctor could be very bad medicine.”

He grinned. “I got an antidote.”

“What have you got on him, Tom?”

“Do I look crazy enough to tell you?”

“You told Carl Hallman.”

“Did I? Maybe he thinks I did. I told him any little thing that came into my little pointed head.”

“What were you trying to do to him?”

“Just stir him up a little. I had to get out of that ward. I couldn’t make it alone.”

“Why did you send Hallman to me?”

“Get him off my hands. He was in my way.”

“You must have had a better reason than that.”

“Sure. I’m a do-gooder.” His wise grin turned malign. “I thought you could use the business.”

“Carl Hallman’s got a murder rap on his hands, did you know that?”

“I know it.”

“If I thought you talked him into it–”

“What would you do? Slap my wrist, do-gooder?”

He looked at me through the glass wall with lazy curiosity, and added casually: “Anyway, he didn’t shoot his brother. He told me so himself.”

“Has he been here?”

“Sure he was here. He wanted Maude to hide him out. She wouldn’t touch him with gloves on.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A couple of hours, maybe. He took off for town when Maude and Dutch gave him the rush.”

“Did he say where he was going in town?”

“No.”

“He didn’t shoot his brother, you say?”

“That’s right, he told me that.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I had to believe him, because I did it myself.” Tom looked at me dead-pan. “I flew over there by helicopter, see. In my new supersonic helicopter with the synchronized death-ray gun.”

“Turn off the stardrive, Tom. Tell me what really happened.”

“Maybe I will, if you give me back my needle.”

His eyes held a curious mixture of plea and threat. They looked expectantly at the bright instrument in my fist. I was tempted to let him have it, on the chance that he knew something I could use. A few more caps in those black veins wouldn’t make any difference. Except to me.

I was sick of the whole business. I threw the needle into the square pink bathtub. It smashed to pieces.

Tom looked at me incredulously. “What did you do that for?”

Sudden fury shook him, too strong for his nerves to carry. It broke through into grief. He flung himself face down on the pink tile floor, sobbing in a voice like fabric tearing.

In the intervals of the noise he made, I heard other noises behind me. Maude was coming through the jungle-colored living-room. A gun gleamed dully blue in her white hand. The man called Dutch was a pace behind her. His grin was broken-toothed. I could see why my knuckles were sore.

“What goes on?” Maude cried. “What did you do to him?”

“Took his needle away. See for yourself.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. “Come out of there. Leave him alone.” She pushed the gun toward my face.

“Let me at him. I’ll clobber the bastard,” the man behind her lisped in punchy eagerness.

An Argyle sock hung heavy and pendulous from his hand. It reminded me of the blackjack in my pocket. I backed out of the doorway to gain elbow room, and swung the leather club over and down at Maude’s wrist.

She hissed with pain. The gun clanked at her feet. Dutch went down on his hands and knees after it. I hit him on the back of the head with the blackjack, not too hard, just hard enough to stretch him on his face again. The heavy sock fell from his numb hand, some of its sand spilling out.

Maude was scrambling in the doorway for the gun. I pushed her back and picked it up and put it in my pocket. It was a medium-caliber revolver and it made a very heavy pocket. I put the blackjack in my other pocket so that I wouldn’t walk lopsided.

Maude leaned on the wall outside the door, holding her right wrist in her left hand. “You’re going to be sorry for this.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Not from me you haven’t, or you wouldn’t be running around making trouble for people. Don’t think it’s going to last. I got the top law in this county in my pocket.”

“Tell me more,” I said. “You have a lovely singing voice. Maybe I can arrange a personal appearance, in front of the Grand Jury.”

Her ugly mouth said yah at me. Her left hand came out stiff, its carmine talons pointed at my eyes. It was more of a threat than attempt, but it made me despair of our relationship.

I left her and found a back way out. There were soft lights and loud noises in the cottages on the terraces, music, female laughter, money, kicks.

I DROVE back toward Purissima, keeping a not very hopeful lookout for Carl Hallman. Just outside the city limits, where the highway dipped down from the bluffs toward the sea, I saw a huddle of cars on the shoulder. Two of the cars had red pulsating lights. Other lights were moving on the beach.

I parked across the highway and got the flashlight out of my dash compartment. Before I closed it, I relieved my pockets of the gun and the blackjack and locked them up. I descended a flight of concrete steps which slanted down to the beach. Near their foot, the vestiges of a small fire glowed. Beside it, a blanket was spread on the sand, weighted down by a picnic basket.

Most of the lights were far up the beach by now, bobbing and swerving like big slow fireflies. Between me and the dim thumping line of the surf, a dozen or so people were milling aimlessly. A man detached himself from the shadowy group and trotted toward me, soft-footed in the sand.

“Hey! That’s my stuff. It belongs to me.”

I flashed my light across him. He was a very young man in a gray sweatshirt with a college letter on the front of it. He moved as though he had won the letter playing football.

“What’s the excitement about?” I said.

“I’m not excited. I just don’t like people messing around with my stuff.”

“Nobody’s messing around with your stuff. I mean the excitement up the beach.”

“The cops are after a guy.”