Росс Макдональд: The Doomsters

“He talked to me, quite a lot. I almost got him back here.”

“Did he seem disturbed? Apart from the outburst of violence, I mean?”

“I’ve seen worse, but I’m no judge. He was pretty bitter about his family.”

“Yes, I know. It was his father’s death that set him off in the first place. The first few weeks he talked of nothing else. But the trouble had died down, at least I thought it had. Of course I’m not a psychiatrist. On the other hand, I’ve had a lot more to do with Carl than any of the psychiatrists.” She added softly: “He’s a sweet person, you know.”

Under the circumstances, the sentiment seemed slightly sticky. I said: “He picked a funny way to show it.”

Miss Parish had emotional equipment to match her splendid physical equipment. The thunderclouds came into her eyes again, with lightning. “He’s not responsible!” she cried. “Can’t you see that? You mustn’t judge him.”

“All right. I’ll go along with that.”

This seemed to calm her, though her brow stayed dark. “I can’t imagine what happened to stir him up. Considering the distance he’d had to come back, he was the most promising patient on the ward. He was due for a P-card in a very few weeks. He’d probably have gone home in two or three months. Carl didn’t have to run away, and he knew it.”

“Remember he had another man with him. Tom Rica may have done some pretty good needling.”

“Is Tom Rica with him now?”

“He wasn’t when I saw Carl.”

“That’s good. I shouldn’t say it about a patient, but Tom Rica is a poor risk. He’s a heroin addict, and this isn’t his first cure. Or his last, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. I knew him when he was a boy. He had his troubles even then, but he was a bright kid.”

“It’s queer that you should know Rica,” she said with some suspicion. “Isn’t that quite a coincidence?”

“No. Tom Rica sent Carl Hallman to me.”

“They are together, then?”

“They left here together. Afterwards, they seem to have gone separate ways.”

“Oh, I hope so. An addict looking for dope, and a vulnerable boy like Carl – they could make an explosive combination.”

“Not a very likely combination,” I said. “How did they happen to be buddies?”

“I wouldn’t say they were buddies, exactly. They were committed from the same place, and Carl’s been looking after Rica on the ward. We never have enough nurses and technicians to go around, so our better patients help to take care of the worse ones. Rica was in a bad way when he came in.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A couple of weeks. He had severe withdrawal symptoms – couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Carl was a positive saint with him: I watched them together. If I’d known how it was going to turn out, I’d have–” She broke off, clamping her teeth down on her lower lip.

“You like Carl,” I said in a neutral tone.

The young woman colored, and answered rather sharply: “You would, too, if you knew him when he’s himself.”

Maybe I would, I thought, but not the way Miss Parish did. Carl Hallman was a handsome boy, and a handsome boy in trouble was a double threat to women, a triple threat if he needed mothering.

Not needing it, and none being offered, I left.

THE ADDRESS WHICH Carl had given me for his wife was near the highway in an older section of Purissima. The highway traffic thrummed invisibly like a damaged artery under the noon silence in the street. Most of the houses were frame cottages or stucco boxes built in the style of thirty years ago. A few were older, three-story mansions surviving from an era of elegance into an era of necessity.

Two-twenty was one of these. Its long closed face seemed abashed by the present. Its white wooden walls needed paint. The grass in the front yard had grown and withered, untouched by the human hand.

I asked the cab-driver to wait and knocked on the front door, which was surmounted by a fanlight of ruby-colored glass. I had to knock several times before I got an answer. Then the door was unlocked and opened, reluctantly and partially.

The woman who showed herself in the aperture had unlikely purplish red hair cut in bangs on her forehead and recently permanented. Blue eyes burned like gas-flames in her rather inert face.

Her mouth was crudely outlined in fresh lipstick, which I guessed she had just dabbed on as a concession to the outside world. The only other concession was a pink nylon robe from which her breasts threatened to overflow. I placed her age in the late forties. She couldn’t be Mrs. Carl Hallman. At least I hoped she couldn’t.

“Is Mrs. Hallman home?”

“No, she isn’t here. I’m Mrs. Gley, her mother.” She smiled meaninglessly. There was lipstick on her teeth, too, gleaming like new blood. “Is it something?”

“I’d like very much to see her.”

“Is it about – him?”

“Mr. Hallman, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Well, I would like to talk to him.”

“Talk to him! It needs more than talk to him. You might as well talk to a stone wall – beat your head bloody against it trying to change his ways.” Though she seemed angry and afraid, she spoke in a low monotone. Her voice was borne on a heavy breath in which Sen-Sen struggled for dominance. You inhaled it as much as heard it.

“Is Mr. Hallman here?”

“No, thank God for small mercies. He hasn’t been here. But I’ve been expecting him ever since she got that call from the hospital.” Her gaze, which had swiveled past me to the street, returned to my face. “Is that your taxi?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Are you from the hospital?”

“I just came from there.”

I’d intended some misrepresentation, which she made me regret immediately: “Why don’t you keep them locked up better? You can’t let crazy-men run around loose. If you knew what my girl has suffered from that man – it’s a terrible thing.” She took the short easy step from motherly concern to self-concern: “Sometimes I think I’m the one who suffered most. The things I hoped and planned for that girl, and then she had to bring that one into the family. I begged and pleaded with her to stay home today. But no, she has to go to work, you’d think the office couldn’t go on without her. She leaves me here by myself to cope.”

She spread out her hands and pressed them into her bosom, the white flesh rising like dough between her fingers.

“It isn’t fair. The world is cruel. You work and hope and plan, then everything goes to pieces. I didn’t deserve it.” A few easy tears ran down her cheeks. She found a ball of Kleenex in her sleeve and wiped her eyes. They shone, undimmed by her grief, with a remarkable intensity. I wondered what fuel fed them.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gley. I’m new on this case. My name is Archer. May I come in and talk to you?”

“Come in if you like. I don’t know what I can tell you. Mildred ought to be home over the noon-hour, she promised she would.”

She moved along the dim hallway, a middle-aged woman going to seed, but not entirely gone. There was something about the way she carried herself: old beauty and grace controlling her flesh, like an unforgotten discipline. She turned at a curtained archway behind which voices murmured.

“Please go in and sit down. I was just changing for lunch. I’ll put something on.”

She started up a flight of stairs which rose from the rear of the hallway. I went in through the curtains, and found myself in a twilit sitting-room with a lighted television screen. At first the people on the screen were unreal shadows. After I sat and watched them for a few minutes, they became realer than the room. The screen became a window into a brightly lighted place where life was being lived, where a beautiful actress couldn’t decide between career and children and had to settle for both. The actual windows of the sitting-room were heavily blinded.