Росс Макдональд: The Doomsters

“Yes. I’m ashamed to say it, but my father cheated some of his own best friends, Japanese people. When I was a kid, before the War, there used to be quite a few of them in our county. They had hundreds of acres of truck gardens between our ranch and town. They’re nearly all gone now. They were driven out during the War, and never came back. Father bought up their land at a few cents on the dollar.

“I told him when I got my share of the ranch, I’d give those people their property back. I’d hire detectives to trace them and bring them back and give them what was theirs. I intended to do it, too. That’s why I’m not going to let Jerry cheat me out of the property. It doesn’t belong to us, you see. We’ve got to give it back. We’ve got to set things right, between us and the land, between us and other people.

“Father said that was nonsense, that he’d bought the land perfectly honestly. In fact, he thought that my ideas were crazy. They all did, even Mildred. We had a big scene about it that last night. It was terrible, with Jerry and Zinnie trying to turn him against me, and Mildred in the middle, trying to make peace. Poor Mildred, she was always in the middle. And I guess she was right, I wasn’t making too much sense. If I had been, I’d have realized that Father was a sick man. Whether I was right or wrong – and of course I was right – Father couldn’t stand that kind of a family ruction.”

I turned off the highway to the right, onto a road which curved back through an underpass, across flat fields, past a giant hedge of eucalyptus trees. The trees looked ancient and sorrowful; the fields were empty.

CARL SAT TENSE and quiet in the seat beside me. After a while he said: “Did you know that words can kill, Mr. Archer? You can kill an old man by arguing with him. I did it to my father. At least,” he added on a different note, “I’ve thought for the last six months that I was responsible. Father died in his bath that night. When Dr. Grantland examined him, he said he’d had a heart attack, brought on by overexcitement. I blamed myself for his death. Jerry and Zinnie blamed me, too. Is it any wonder I blew my top? I thought I was a parricide.

“But now I don’t know,” he said. “When I found out about Dr. Grantland, it started me thinking back all over again. Why should I go by the word of a man like that? He hasn’t even the right to call himself a doctor. It’s the strain of not knowing that I can’t stand. You see, if Father died of a heart attack, then I’m responsible.”

“Not necessarily. Old men die every day.”

“Don’t try to confuse me,” he said peremptorily. “I can see the issue quite clearly. If Father died of a heart attack, I killed him with my words, and I’m a murderer. But if he died of something else, then someone else is the murderer. And Dr. Grantland is covering up for them.”

I was pretty certain by now that I was listening to paranoid delusions. I handled them with kid gloves: “That doesn’t sound too likely, Carl. Why don’t you give it a rest for now? Think about something else.”

“I can’t!” he cried. “You’ve got to help me get at the truth. You promised to help me.”

“I will–” I started to say.

Carl grabbed my right elbow. The car veered onto the shoulder, churning gravel. I braked, wrestling the wheel and Carl’s clutching hands. The car came to a stop at a tilt, one side in the shallow ditch. I shook him off.

“That was a smart thing to do.”

He was careless or unaware of what had happened. “You’ve got to believe me,” he said. “Somebody’s got to believe me.”

“You don’t believe yourself. You’ve told me two stories already. How many others are there?”

“You’re calling me a liar.”

“No. But your thinking needs some shaking out. You’re the only one who can do that. And the hospital is the place to do it in.”

The buildings of the great hospital were visible ahead, in the gap between two hills. We noticed them at the same time. Carl said: “No. I’m not going back there. You promised to help me, but you don’t intend to. You’re just like all the others. So I’ll have to do it myself.”

“Do what?”

“Find out the truth. Find out who killed my father, and bring him to justice.”

I said as gently as possible: “You’re talking a little wild, kid. Now you keep your half of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine. You go back in and get well, I’ll see what I can find out.”

“You’re only trying to humor me. You don’t intend to do anything.”

“Don’t I?”

He was silent. By way of proving that I was on his side, I said: “It will probably help if you’d tell me what you know about this Grantland. This morning you mentioned a record.”

“Yes, and I wasn’t lying. I got it from a good source – a man who knows him.”

“Another patient?”

“He’s a patient, yes. That doesn’t prove anything. He’s perfectly sane, there’s nothing the matter with his mind.”

“Is that what he says?”

“The doctors say it, too. He’s in for narcotic addiction.”

“That hardly recommends him as a witness.”

“He was telling me the truth,” Carl said. “He’s known Dr. Grantland for years, and all about him. Grantland used to supply him with narcotics.”

“Bad enough, if true. But it’s still a long way to murder.”

“I see.” His tone was disconsolate. “You want me to think I did it. You give me no hope.”

“Listen to me,” I said.

But he was deep in himself, examining a secret horror. He sobbed once in dry pain. Without any other warning, he turned on me. Dull sorrow filmed his eyes. His hooked hands swung together reaching for my throat. Immobilized behind the steering wheel, I reached for the door handle to gain some freedom of action. Carl was too quick for me. His large hands closed on my neck. I struck at his face with my right hand, but he was almost oblivious.

His close-up face was immense and bland, spotted with clear drops of sweat. He shook me. Daylight began to wane.

“Lay off,” I said. “Damn fool.” But the words were a rusty cawing.

I hit at him again, ineffectually, without leverage. One of his hands left my neck and came up hard against the point of my jaw. I went out.

I came to in the dry ditch, beside the tire marks where my car had stood. As I got up the checkerboard fields fell into place around me, teetering slightly. I felt remarkably small, like a pin on a map.

I TOOK OFF MY JACKET and slapped the dust out of it and started to walk toward the hospital. It lay, like a city state, in the middle of its own fields. It had no walls. Perhaps their place was taken by the hills which stood around it, jagged and naked, on three sides. Broad avenues divided the concrete buildings which gave no outward indication of their use. The people walking on the sidewalks looked not much different from people anywhere, except that there was no hurry, nowhere to hurry to. The sun-stopped place with its massive, inscrutable buildings had an unreal quality; perhaps it was only hurry that was missing.

A fat man in blue jeans appeared from behind a parked car and approached me confidentially. In a low genteel voice he asked me if I wanted to buy a leather case for my car keys. “It’s very good hand-carved leather, sir, hand-crafted in the hospital.” He displayed it.

“Sorry, I don’t have any use for it. Where do I go to get some information, about a patient?”

“Depends what ward he’s on.”

“I don’t know the ward.”

“You’d better ask at Administration.” He pointed toward a new-looking off-white building at the intersection of two streets. But he was unwilling to let me go. “Did you come by bus?”