Росс Макдональд - The Doomsters

“I walked.”

“From Los Angeles?”

“Part of the way.”

“No car, eh?”

“My car was stolen.”

“That’s too bad. I live in Los Angeles, you know. I have a Buick station wagon, pretty good car. My wife keeps it up on blocks in the garage. They say that keeps the tires from deteriorating.”

“Good idea.”

“Yes,” he said. “I want that car to be in good condition.”

Broad concrete steps led up to the entrance of the administration building. I put on my jacket over my wet shirt, and went in through the glass doors. The highly groomed brunette at the information desk gave me a bright professional smile. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’d like to see the superintendent.”

Her smile hardened a little. “His schedule is very full today. May I have your name, please?”

“Archer.”

“And what do you wish to see him about, Mr. Archer?”

“A confidential matter.”

“One of our patients?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Are you a relative?”

“No.”

“Which patient are you interested in, and what exactly is your interest, sir?”

“I’d better save that for the superintendent.”

“You might have to wait all morning to see him. He has a series of conferences. I couldn’t promise even then that he could find time for you.”

It was gently administered, but it was the brush-off. There was no way to get around her quiet watchdog poise, so I gave it a frontal push: “One of your patients escaped last night. He’s violent.”

She was unruffled. “You wish to lodge a complaint?”

“Not necessarily. I need some advice.”

“Perhaps I can help you to it, if you’ll give me the patient’s name. Otherwise, I have no way of knowing which doctor is responsible for him.”

“Carl Hallman.”

Her thin eyebrows twitched upward: she recognized the name. “If you’ll sit down, sir, I’ll try to get the information for you.”

She picked up one of her telephones. I sat down and lit a cigarette. It was still early in the morning, and I was the only one in the waiting-room. Its colored furniture and shiny waxed tile floors were insistently cheerful. I cheered up slightly myself when a covey of bright young nurses came in, and went twittering down a corridor.

The woman behind the desk put down her telephone and crooked a finger at me. “Dr. Brockley will see you. He’s in his office now. You’ll find it in the building behind this one, in the main corridor.”

The second building was enormous. Its central corridor looked long enough to stage a hundred-yard-dash in. I contemplated making one. Ever since the Army, big institutions depressed me: channels, red tape, protocol, buck-passing, hurry up and wait. Only now and then you met a man with enough gumption to keep the big machine from bogging down of its own weight.

The door with Dr. Brockley’s name above it was standing open. He came around from behind his desk, a middle-sized, middle-aged man in a gray herringbone suit, and gave me a quick hard hand.

“Mr. Archer? I happened to come in early this morning, so I can give you fifteen minutes. Then I’m due on the ward.”

He placed me in a straight chair against the wall, brought me an ashtray, sat at his desk with his back to the window. He was quick in movement, very still in repose. His bald scalp and watchful eyes made him resemble a lizard waiting for a fly to expose itself.

“I understand you have a complaint against Carl Hallman. Perhaps you should understand that the hospital is not responsible for his actions. We’re interested, but not responsible. He left here without permission.”

“I know that. He told me.”

“You’re a friend of Hallman’s?”

“I don’t know him at all. He came to my house early this morning to try and get my help.”

“What sort of help did he want?”

“It’s a pretty involved story, having to do with his family. I think a lot of it was pure delusion. The main thing seems to be, he feels responsible for his father’s death. He wants to get rid of the feeling. So he came to me. I happen to be a private detective. A friend of his recommended me to him.”

When I named my profession, or sub-profession, the temperature went down. The doctor said frostily: “If you’re looking for family information, I can’t give it to you.”

“I’m not. I thought the best thing I could do for Hallman was bring him back here. I talked him into it, and we almost made it. Then he got excited and started throwing his weight around. As a matter of fact–” I’d been holding it back, because I was ashamed of it “–he took me by surprise and stole my car.”

“It doesn’t sound like him.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say he stole it. He was upset, and I don’t think he knew what he was doing. But he took it, and I want it back.”

“Are you sure he took it?”

Another bureaucrat, I thought, with a noose of red tape up his sleeve. Another one of those. I said: “I confess, Doctor. I never had a car. It was all a dream. The car was a sex symbol, see, and when it disappeared, it meant I’m entering the change of life.”

He answered without a flicker of expression, smile or frown: “I mean, are you sure it wasn’t the other one who stole your car? Another patient was with him when he took off last night. Didn’t they stick together?”

“I only saw the one. Who was the other?”

Dr. Brockley lifted a manila folder out of his in-basket and studied its contents, or pretended to. “Normally,” he said after a while, “we don’t discuss our patients with outsiders. On the other hand, I’d like–” He closed the folder and slapped it down. “Let me put it this way. What do you intend to do about this alleged car theft? You want to see Hallman punished, naturally.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I think he belongs in the hospital.”

“What makes you think so?”

“He’s flying, and he could be dangerous. He’s a powerful boy. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but he tried to throttle me.”

“Really? You’re not exaggerating?”

I showed him the marks on my neck. Dr. Brockley forgot himself for a second, and let his humanity show through, like a light behind a door. “Damn it, I’m sorry.” But it was his patient he was sorry for. “Carl was doing so well these last few months – no acting out at all. What happened to set him off, do you know?”

“It may have been the idea of coming back here – this happened just up the road. The situation was sort of complicated. I let him talk too much, about his family, and then I made the mistake of arguing with him.”

“Do you remember what about?”

“A fellow patient of his. Carl said he was a narcotics addict. He claimed the man gave him some suspicious information about a doctor he knew, a Dr. Grantland.”

“I’ve met him. He’s the Hallman family doctor. Incidentally, Grantland was instrumental in having Carl committed. It’s natural that Carl would have feelings against him.”

“He made some accusations. I don’t think I’ll repeat them, at least to another doctor.”

“As you please.” Brockley had resumed his poker face. “You say the source of the accusation was another patient, a narcotics addict?”

“That’s right. I told Carl he should consider the source. He thought I was calling him a liar.”

“What was the addict’s name?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

Brockley said thoughtfully: “The man who escaped with him last night was a heroin addict. He’s just another patient, of course – we treat them all alike – but he’s quite a different kettle of fish from Carl Hallman. In spite of his disturbance, Carl’s essentially a naive and idealistic young man. Potentially a valuable man.” The doctor was talking more to himself than to me. “I’d hate to think he’s under Tom Rica’s influence.”