Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

The fourth and final book was a stamped-leather album of clippings. The newspaper picture on the first page showed a boyish Lance leaning wide-shouldered and wasp-waisted into the camera. The caption stated that Manny Torres was being trained by his Uncle Tony, veteran club-fighter, and experts conceded him an excellent chance of capturing the lightweight division of the Golden Gloves. There was no follow-up to this. The second entry was a short account of Lance Torres’ professional debut; he had knocked out another welterweight in two minutes of the second round. And so on for twenty fights, through six-rounders up to twelve. None of the clippings mentioned his arrest and suspension.

I replaced the album on the shelf and went back to the dead man. His breast pocket contained an alligator billfold thick with money, a matching address book filled with girls’ names and telephone numbers scattered from National City to Ojai. Two of the names were Hester Campbell and Rina Campbell. I wrote down their Los Angeles telephone numbers.

There was a gold cigarette case full of reefers in the side pocket of his dinner jacket. In the same pocket, I found an engraved invitation in an envelope addressed to Lance Leonard, Esq. at the Coldwater Canyon address. Mr. and Mrs. Simon Graff requested his presence at a Roman Saturnalia to be held at the Channel Club tonight.

I put everything back and stood up to leave, turned at the door for a final look at the boy. He lay exhausted by his incredible leap from nowhere into the sun. His face was old-ivory in the flashlight beam. I switched it off and let the darkness take him.

“Lance Manuel Purificación Torres Leonard,” I said out loud by way of epitaph.

Outside, a wisp of cloud dampened my face like cold and meager tears. I climbed on heavy legs to my car. Before I started the motor, I heard another motor whining up the grade from the direction of Ventura Boulevard. Headlights climbed the hanging cloud. I left my own lights off.

The headlights swerved around the final curve, projected by a dark sedan with a massive chrome cowcatcher. Without hesitating, they entered Leonard’s driveway and lit up the front of his house. A man got out of the driver’s seat and waded through the flowing light to the front door. He wore a dark raincoat belted tight at the waist, and he stepped lightly, with precision. All I could see of his head was the short, dark crewcut that surmounted it.

Having knocked and got no answer, he pulled out a flashing keyring and opened the door. The lights came on in the house. A minute later, half muffled by its redwood walls, a man’s voice rose in a scream which sounded like a crow cawing. The lights went out again. The cawing continued for some time in the dark interior of the house.

There was an interval of silence before the door was opened. The man stepped out into the glare of his own headlights. He was Carl Stern. In spite of the crewcut and the neat bow tie, his face resembled an old woman’s who had been bereaved.

He turned his sedan rather erratically and passed my car without appearing to notice it. I had to start and turn my car, but I caught him before he reached the foot of the hill. He went through boulevard stops as if he had a motorcycle escort. So did I. I had him.

Then we were on Manor Crest Drive, and I was completing the circuit of the roller-coaster. There was a difference, though. Hester’s house was lighted upstairs and down. On the second floor, a woman’s shadow moved across a blind. She moved like a young woman, with an eager rhythm.

Stern left his sedan in the driveway with the motor running, knocked and was admitted, came out again before I’d decided what to do. He got in and drove away. I didn’t follow him. It was beginning to look as though Hester was home again.

I WENT in by the broken lanai door and through to the front. Feet were busy on the floor over my head. I heard quick, clacking heels and a girl’s tuneless humming. I climbed the stairs, leaning part of my weight on the banister. At the end of the upstairs hallway, light spilled from the doorway of the front bedroom. I moved along the wall to a point from which I could see into the room.

The girl was standing by the canopied bed with her back to me. She was very simply dressed in a tweed skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse. Her bright hair was brushed slick round the curve of her skull. A white leather suitcase with a blue silk lining lay open on the bed. She was folding some kind of black dress into it, tenderly.

She straightened and went to the far side of the room, her hips swinging from a flexible small waist. She opened the mirrored door of a closet and entered its lighted interior. When she came out, with more clothes in her arms, I was in the room.

Her body went stiff. The bright-colored dresses fell to the floor. She stepped backward against the mirrored door, which closed with a snap.

“Hello, Hester. I thought you were dead.”

Her teeth showed, and she pressed her knuckles against them. She said behind the knuckles: “Who are you?”

“The name is Archer. Don’t you remember me from this morning?”

“Are you the detective – the one that Lance had a fight with?”

I nodded.

“What do you want with me?”

“A little talk.”

“You get out of here.” She glanced at the ivory telephone on the bedside table, and said uncertainly: “I’ll call the police.”

“I doubt that very much.”

She took her hand away from her mouth and laid it against her side below the swell of her breast, as though she felt a pain there. Anger and anxiety wrenched at her face, but she was one of those girls who couldn’t look ugly. There was a sculptured beauty built into her bones, and she held herself with a sense that her beauty would look after her.

“I warn you,” she said, “some friends of mine are coming, any minute now.”

“Fine. I’d like to meet them.”

“You think so?”

“I think so.”

“Stick around if you like, then,” she said. “Do you mind I go on with my packing?”

“Go right ahead, Hester. You are Hester Campbell, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer me or look at me. She picked up the fallen dresses, carried the rustling sheaf to the bed, and began to pack.

“Where are you going at this time of night?” I said.

“It’s no concern of yours.”

“Cops might be interested.”

“Might they? Go and tell them, why don’t you? Do anything you like.”

“That’s kind of reckless talk for a girl on the lam.”

“I’m not on the lam, as you put it, and you don’t frighten me.”

“You’re just going away for a weekend in the country.”

“Why not?”

“I heard you tell Lance this morning that you wanted out.”

She didn’t react to the name as I’d half suspected she would. Her deft hands went on folding the last of the dresses. I liked her courage, and distrusted it. There could be a gun in the suitcase. But when she finally turned she was empty-handed.

“Wanted out of what?” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I couldn’t care less.” But she cared.

“These friends of yours who are coming here – is Lance Leonard one of them?”

“Yes, and you better get out before he does come.”

“You’re sure he’s coming?”

“You’ll see.”

“It ought to be something to see. Who’s going to carry the basket?”

“The basket?” she said in a high little voice.

“Lance isn’t getting around much any more. They have to carry him in a basket.”

Her hand went to her side again. The pain had risen higher. Her body moved angrily, hips and shoulders, trying to pass through the narrow space between the bed and me. I blocked her way.