Росс Макдональд - The Doomsters

MY QUASI-PATERNAL instinct followed her home; I went along for the ride. She made it safely, and left the black convertible at the curb. When I pulled in behind it, she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk: “What are you trying to do?”

“Seeing Millie home.”

Her response was flat. “Well, I’m home.”

The old house leaned like a tombstone on the night. But there were lights inside, behind cracked blinds, and the sound of a broken soprano voice. I got out and followed Mildred up the walk: “You almost got yourself run over.”

“Did I?” She turned at the top of the veranda steps. “I don’t need a keeper, thank you. In fact, all I want is to be let alone.”

“The deep tangled wildwood,” the lost and strident voice sang from the house. “And all the loved songs that my infancy knew.”

“Is your mother all right, Mildred?”

“Mother’s just dandy, thank you. She’s been drinking all day.” She looked up and down the dark street and said in a different voice: “Even the crummy people who live on this street look down their noses at us. I can’t put up a front any more. I’d simply like to crawl into a hole and die.”

“You need some rest.”

“How can I get any rest? With all this trouble on my shoulders? And that?”

Cast by the light from one of the front windows, her shadow lay broken on the steps. She gestured toward the window. Behind it her mother had finished her song and was playing some closing bars on a badly tuned piano.

“Anyway,” Mildred said, “I have to go to work tomorrow morning. I can’t miss another half day.”

“Who do you work for, Simon Legree?”

“I don’t mean that. Mr. Haines is very nice. It’s just, if I go off schedule, I’m afraid I’ll never get back on.”

She fumbled in her black plastic bag for her key. The doorknob turned before she touched it. The outside light came on over our heads. Mrs. Gley opened the door, smiling muzzily: “Bring your friend in, dear. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Your mother’s always pleased and proud to entertain your friends.”

Mrs. Gley didn’t seem to recognize me; I was part of the indiscriminate past blurred out by the long day’s drinking. She was glad to see me anyway.

“Bring your friend in, Mildred. I’ll pour him a drink. A young man likes to be entertained; that’s something you’ve got to learn. You’ve wasted too much of your youth on that good-for-nothing husband–”

“Stop making a fool of yourself,” Mildred said coldly.

“I am not making a fool of myself. I am expressing the feelings of my womanly heart. Isn’t that so?” she appealed to me. “You’ll come in and have a drink with me, won’t you?”

“Be glad to.”

“And I’ll be glad to have you.”

Mrs. Gley spread her arms out in a welcoming gesture, and toppled toward me. I caught her under the arms. She giggled against my shirt front. With Mildred’s help, I walked her into the sitting-room. She was awkward to handle in her draperies, like a loosely shrouded corpse.

But she managed to sit upright on the sofa and say in gracious tones: “Excuse me. I was overcome by dizziness for a moment. The shock of the night air, you know.”

Like someone struck by a bullet, invisible and inaudible, she fell softly sideways. Very soon, she began to snore.

Mildred straightened out her mother’s legs, smoothed her purplish red hair and put a cushion under her head. She took off her own cloth coat and covered the lower part of her mother’s body. She did these things with neutral efficiency, without tenderness and without anger, as though she’d done them many times before and expected to do them many times again.

In the same neutral way, like an older woman speaking to a younger, she said: “Poor mother, have sweet dreams. Or no dreams. I wish you no dreams at all.”

“Can I help to get her upstairs?” I said.

“She can sleep here. She often has. This happens two or three times a week. We’re used to it.”

Mildred sat at her mother’s feet and looked around the room as if to memorize its shabby contents. She stared at the empty eye of the television set. The empty eye stared back at her. She looked down at her mother’s sleeping face. My feeling that their ages were reversed was stronger when she spoke again: “Poor redhead. She used to be a genuine redhead, too. I give her money to have it dyed. But she prefers to dye it herself, and save the money for drinking. I can’t really blame her. She’s tired. She ran a boarding-house for fourteen years and then she got tired.”

“Is your mother a widow?”

“I don’t know.” She raised her eyes to my face. “It hardly matters. My father took off when I was seven years old. He had a wonderful chance to buy a ranch in Nevada for very little down. Father was always getting those wonderful chances, but this was the one that was really going to pay off. He was supposed to come back for us in three weeks or a month, when everything was settled. He never did come back. I heard from him just once. He sent me a present for my eighth birthday, a ten-dollar gold piece from Reno. There was a little note along with it, that I wasn’t to spend it. I was to keep it as a token of his love. I didn’t spend it, either. Mother did.”

If Mildred felt resentment, she didn’t show it. She sat for a time, silent and still. Then she twitched her slender shoulders, as though to shake off the dead hand of the past: “I don’t know how I got off on the subject of Father. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She changed the subject abruptly: “This man Rica, at the Buenavista Inn, what kind of a person is he?”

“Pretty dilapidated. There’s not much left but hunger. He’s been on dope for years. As a witness he may be useless.”

“As a witness?”

“He said that Carl told him he didn’t shoot Jerry.”

Faint color rose in her face, and her eyes brightened. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“You didn’t give me a chance to. You seemed to have a rendezvous with a truck.”

Her color deepened. “I admit I had a bad reaction. You oughtn’t to have put your arm around me.”

“I meant it in a friendly way.”

“I know. It just reminded me of something. We were talking about those people at the Inn.”

“I thought you didn’t know them.”

“I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them.” She hesitated. “But don’t you think you should inform the police about what that man said?”

“I haven’t made up my mind.”

“Did you believe what he said?”

“With reservations. I never did think that Carl shot his brother. But my opinion isn’t based on Rica’s testimony. He’s a dream-talker.”

“What is it based on?”

“It’s hard to say. I had a strange feeling about the events at the ranch today. They had an unreal quality. Does that fit in with anything you noticed?”

“I think so, but I couldn’t pin it down. What do you mean, exactly?”

“If I could say exactly, I’d know what happened out there. I don’t know what happened, not yet. Some of the things I saw with my own eyes seemed as if they’d been staged for my benefit. Your husband’s movements don’t make sense to me, and neither do some of the others. That includes the sheriff.”

“It doesn’t mean Carl is guilty.”

“That’s just my point. He did his best to try and prove that he was, but I’m not convinced. You’re familiar with the situation, the people involved. And if Carl didn’t shoot Jerry, somebody else did. Who had a motive?”

“Zinnie had, of course. Only the idea of Zinnie is impossible. Women like Zinnie don’t shoot people.”

“Sometimes they do if the people are their husbands, and if they have strong enough motives. Love and money are a strong combination.”