Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

Frost was leaning on the window sill, watching the distant figures. Marfeld’s shoulder, leaning over George, moved in a jerky rhythm from side to side. I pushed Frost out of the way – he was light as straw – and went out through the window and across the lot.

Marfeld and Lashman were fascinated and oblivious. Marfeld was pistol-whipping George while Lashman held him up. Blood streaked his blind face and spotted his charcoal-gray suit. I noticed the irrelevant fact that the suit belonged to me: I’d last seen it hanging in my bedroom closet. I moved on them in ice-cold anger, got one hand on Marfeld’s collar and the other on the slippery barrel of the gun. I heaved. The man and the gun came apart. The man went down backward. The gun stayed in my hand. It belonged to me, anyway. I reversed it and held it on Lashman: “Turn him loose. Let him down easy.”

The little, cruel mouth in his big jaw opened and closed. The fever left his eyes. He laid George out on the white imported sand. The boy was out, with the whites of his eyes glaring.

I took the revolver off Lashman’s hip, stepped back and included Marfeld in the double line of fire. “What are you cookies up to, or you just do this for fun?”

Marfeld got to his feet, but he remained silent, Lashman answered the guns in my hands politely: “The guy’s a crackpot. He bust into Mr. Graff’s office, threatened to kill him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It was something about his wife.”

“Button it down,” Marfeld growled. “You talk too much, Lashrnan.”

There were muffled footsteps in the dust behind me. I circled Marfeld and Lashman, and backed against the bamboo wall of a hut. Frost and the guard from the vestibule were crossing the lot toward us. This guard had a carbine on his arm. He stopped, and raised it into firing position.

“Drop it,” I said. “Tell him to drop it, Frost.”

“Drop it,” he said to the guard.

The carbine thudded on the ground and sent up a little dust cloud. The situation was mine. I didn’t want it.

“What goes on?” Frost said in a querulous tone. “Who is he?”

“Hester Campbell’s husband. Kick him around some more if you really want bad publicity.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“You better get him to a doctor.”

Nobody moved. Frost slid his hand up under his waistcoat and fingered his rib-cage to see if his heart had stopped. He said faintly: “You brought him here?”

“You know better than that.”

“The guy tried to kill Mr. Graff,” Lashman said virtuously. “He was chasing Mr. Graff around the office.”

“Is Graff all right?”

“Yeah, sure. I heard the guy yelling and run him out of there before he did any damage.”

Frost turned to the guard who had dropped the carbine: “How did he get in?”

The man looked confused, then sullen. He broke his lips apart with difficulty: “He had a press card. Said he had an appointment with Mr. Graff.”

“You didn’t clear it with me.”

“You were busy, you said not to disturb–”

“Don’t tell me what I said. Get out of here. You’re finished here. Who hired you?”

“You did, Mr. Frost.”

“I ought to be shot for that. Now get out of my sight.” His voice was very mild. “Tell anybody about this, anybody at all, and you might as well leave town, it’ll save you hospital bills.”

The man’s face had turned a grainy white, the color of rice pudding. He opened and closed his mouth several times without speaking, turned on his heel, and trudged toward the gate.

Frost looked down at the bloody man in the sand. He whined with pity, all of it for himself: “What am I going to do with him?”

“Move your butt and get him an ambulance.”

Frost turned his measuring look on me. Over it, he tried on a Santa Claus smile that didn’t fit. A fluttering tic in one eyelid gave him the air of having a secret understanding with me: “I talked a little rough back there in the office. Forget it, Lew. I like you. As a matter of fact, I like you very much.”

“Get him an ambulance,” I said, “or you’ll be needing one for yourself.”

“Sure, in a minute.” He rolled his eyes toward the sky like a producer having an inspiration. “I been thinking for some time, long before this came up, we can use you in the organization, Lew. How would you like to go to Italy, all expenses paid? No real work, you’ll have men under you. It’ll be a free vacation.”

I looked at his sick, intelligent face and the cruel, stupid faces of the two men beside him. They went with the unreal buildings which stood around like the cruel, sick pretense of a city.

“I wouldn’t let you pay my way to Pismo Beach. Now turn around and walk, Frost. You too, Marfeld, Lashman. Stay close together. We’re going to a telephone and call the Receiving Hospital. We’ve wasted enough time.”

I had very little hope of getting out of there and taking George out with me. I merely had to try. What hope I had died a sudden death. Two men appeared ahead of us in Midwestern Town, running stooped over behind a clean white picket fence. One was the guard Frost had fired. Both of them had Thompson guns at the ready.

They saw me and ducked behind a deep front porch with an old-fashioned glider on it. Frost and his goons stopped walking. I said to Frost’s back: “You’re going to have to handle this with care. You’ll be the first one drilled. Tell them to come out into the middle of the street and put their tommyguns down.”

Frost turned to face me, shaking his head. Out of the tail of my left eye, I saw a third man running and crouching toward me, hugging the walls of the South Sea huts. He had a riot gun. I felt like a major strike was being broken. Frost made a mock-lugubrious face which fitted all wrinkles.

“You’d never get out alive.” He raised his voice. “Drop ’em, Lew. I’ll count to three.”

The man in the tail of my left eye was on his elbows and knees, crawling. He lay still and aimed as Frost began to count. I dropped the guns on the count of two. Marfeld and Lashman turned at the sound.

Frost nodded. “Now you’re being smart.”

Marfeld scooped up the guns. Lashman took a step forward. He had a black leather sap in his right hand. The man with the riot gun was on his feet now, trotting. The commandos behind the front porch came out from behind it, cautiously at first and then more quickly. The one Frost had fired had a silly, sickly grin on his face. He was ashamed of what he was doing, but couldn’t stop doing it. Away off on the other side of the lot, Simon Graff stood in a doorway and watched Lashman swing his sap.

TIME began to tick again, in fits and starts. Pain glowed in my mind like lightning in a cloud, expanding and contracting with my heartbeat. I lay on my back on a hard surface. Somewhere above me, Lance Leonard said through flutter and wow: “This is a neat layout Carlie’s got himself here. I been out here plenty of times. He gives me the run of the place. I get the use of it any time he’s away. It’s swell for dames.”

“Be quiet.” It was Frost.

“I was just explaining.” Leonard’s voice was aggrieved. “I know this place like I know the back of my hand. Anything you want, any kind of booze or wine, I can get it for you.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Neither do I. You on drugs?”

“Yah, I’m on drugs,” Frost said bitterly. “Now shut it off. I’m trying to think.”

Leonard subsided. I lay in the unblessed silence for a while. Sunlight was hot on my skin and red through my eyelids. When I raised my eyelids slightly, scalpels of light probed the inside of my head.

“His eyelids just fluttered.” Leonard said.