Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

Needing a drink more than ever, I thanked her and excused myself and found my way to the drinking-room. A curved mahogany bar took up one end of it. The other walls were decorated with Hollywood-Fauvist murals. The large room contained several dozen assorted couples hurling late-night insults at each other and orders at the Filipino bartenders. There were actresses with that numb and varnished and would-be actresses with that waiting look; junior-executive types hacking diligently at each other with their profiles; their wives watching each other through smiles; and others.

I sat at the bar between strangers, wheedled a whisky-and-water out of one of the white-coated Filipinos, and listened to the people. These were movie people, but a great deal of their talk was about television. They talked about communications media and the black list and the hook and payment for second showings and who had money for pilot films and what their agents said. Under their noise, they gave out a feeling of suspense. Some of them seemed to be listening hard for the rustle of a dropping option. Some of their eyes were knowing previews of that gray, shaking hangover dawn when all the mortgage payments came due at once and the options fell like snow.

The man on my immediate right looked like an old actor and sounded like a director. Maybe he was an actor turned director. He was explaining something to a frog-voiced whisky blonde: “It means it’s happening to you, you see. You’re the one in love with the girl, or the boy, as the case may be. It’s not the girl on the screen he’s making a play for, it’s you.”

“Empathy-schwempathy,” she croaked pleasantly. “Why not just call it sex?”

“It isn’t sex. It includes sex.”

“Then I’m for it. Anything that includes sex, I’m for it. That’s my personal philosophy of life.”

“And a fine philosophy it is,” another man said. “Sex and television are the opium of the people.”

“I thought marijuana was the opium of the people.”

“Marijuana is the marijuana of the people.”

There was a girl on my left. I caught a glimpse of her profile, young and pretty and smooth as glass. She was talking earnestly to the man beside her, an aging clown I’d seen in twenty movies.

“You said you’d catch me if I fell,” she said.

“I was feeling stronger then.”

“You said you’d marry me if it ever happened.”

“You got more sense than to take me seriously. I’m two years behind on alimony now.”

“You’re very romantic, aren’t you?”

“That’s putting it mildly, sweetheart. I got some sense of responsibility, though. I’ll do what I can for you, give you a telephone number. And you can tell him to send the bill to me.”

“I don’t want your dirty telephone number. I don’t want your dirty money.”

“Be reasonable. Think of it like it was a tumor or something – that is, if it really exists. Another drink?”

“Make mine prussic acid,” she said dully.

“On the rocks?”

I left half my drink standing. It was air I needed. At one of the marble-topped tables in the court, under the saw-toothed shadow of a banana tree, Simon Graff was sitting with his wife. His gray hair was still dark and slick from the shower. He wore a dinner jacket with a pink shirt and a red cummerbund. She wore a blue mink coat over a black gown figured with gold which was out of style. His face was brown and pointed, talking at her. I couldn’t see her face. She was looking out through the windscreen at the pool.

I had a contact mike in my car, and I went out to the parking-lot to get it. There were fewer cars than there had been, and one additional one: Carl Stern’s sedan. It had Drive-Yourself registration. I didn’t take time to go over it.

Graff was still talking when I got back to the poolside. The pool was abandoned now, but wavelets still washed the sides, shining in the underwater light. Hidden from Graff by the banana tree, I moved a rope chair up against the windscreen and pressed the mike to the plate glass. The trick had worked before, and it worked again. He was saying: “Oh, yes, certainly, everything is my fault, I am your personal bête noire, and I apologize deeply.”

“Please, Simon.”

“Simon who? There is no Simon here. I am Mephisto Bête Noire, the famous hell husband. No!” His voice rose sharply on the word. “Think a minute, Isobel, if you have any mind left to think with. Think of what I have done for you, what I have endured and continue to endure. Think where you would be if it weren’t for my support.”

“This is support?”

“We won’t argue. I know what you want. I know your purpose in attacking me.” His voice was smooth as butter salted with tears. “You have suffered, and you want me to suffer. I refuse to suffer. You cannot make me suffer.”

“God damn you,” she said in a rustling whisper.

“God damn me, eh? How many drinks have you had?”

“Five or ten or twelve. Does it signify?”

“You know you cannot drink, that alcohol is death for you. Must I call Dr. Frey and have you locked up again?”

“No!” She was frightened. “I’m not drunk.”

“Of course not. You are sobriety personified. You are the girl ideal of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, mens sana in corpore sano . But let me tell you one thing, Mrs. Sobriety. You are not going to ruin my party, no matter what. If you cannot or will not act as hostess, you will take yourself off, Toko will drive you.”

“Get her to be your hostess, why don’t you?”

“Who? Who are you talking about?”

“Hester Campbell,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re not seeing her.”

“For business purposes. I have seen her for business purposes. If you have hired detectives, you will regret it”

“I don’t need detectives, I have my sources. Did you give her the house for business purposes? Did you buy her those clothes for business purposes?”

“What do you know about that house? Have you been in that house?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Yes.” The word hissed like steam escaping from an overloaded pressure system. “I make it my business. Were you in that house today?”

“Maybe.”

“Answer me, crazy woman.”

“You can’t talk to me like that.” She began to call him names in a low, husky voice. It sounded like something tearing inside of her, permitting the birth of a more violent personality.

She rose suddenly, and I saw her walking across the patio in a straight line, moving among the dancers as though they were phantoms, figments of her mind. Her hip bumped the door frame as she went into the bar.

She came right out again, by another door. I caught a glimpse of her face in the light from the pool. It was white and frightened-looking. Perhaps the people frightened her. She skirted the shallow end of the pool, clicking along on high heels, and entered a cabaña on the far side.

I strolled toward the other end of the pool. The diving tower rose gleaming against a bank of fog that hid the sea. The ocean end was surrounded by a heavy wire fence. From a locked gate in the fence, a flight of concrete steps led down to the beach. High tides had gnawed and crumbled the lower steps.

I leaned on the gatepost and lit a cigarette. I had to cup the match against the stream of cold air which flowed upward from the water. This and the heavy sky overhead created the illusion that I was on the bow of a slow ship, and the ship was headed into foggy darkness.

SOMEWHERE behind me, a woman’s voice rose sharp. A man’s voice answered it and drowned it out. I turned and looked around the bright, deserted pool. The two were standing close together at the wavering margin of the light, so close they might have been a single dark and featureless body. They were at the far end of the gallery, maybe forty yards away from me, but their voices came quite clearly across the water.