Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“Don’t bother.”

I drank the red stuff down. It tasted like tomato juices.

“Was it all right?”

“It was very good.”

“I was afraid there for a minute that there was something the matter with it.”

“Nothing the matter with it, The matter was with me.”

He took six eggs out of the refrigerator and broke them onto the grill. They sputtered cozily, turning white at the edges. Tobias said over his shoulder: “It doesn’t alter what I said about the big corporations. Mass production and mass marketing do make for some social benefits, but sheer size tends to militate against the human element. We’ve reached the point where we should count the human cost. How do you like your eggs?”

“Over easy.”

“Over easy it is.” He flipped the six eggs with a spatula, and inserted bread in the four-hole toaster. “You want to butter your own toast, or you want me to butter it for you? I have a butter brush. Personally, I prefer that, myself.”

“You butter it for me.”

“Will do. Now how do you like your coffee?”

“At this time in the morning, black. This is a very fine service you have here.”

“We endeavor to please. I used to be a snack-bar bus boy before I switched over to lifeguard. Lifeguard doesn’t pay any better, but it gives me more time to study.”

“You’re a student, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” He dished up our eggs and poured our coffee. “I bet you’re surprised at the facility with which I express myself.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

He beamed with pleasure, and took a bite of toast. When he had chewed and swallowed it, he said: “I don’t generally let the language flow around here. People, the richer they get, the more they dislike to hear a Negro express himself in well-chosen words. I guess they feel there’s no point in being rich unless you can feel superior to somebody. I study English on the college level, but if I talked that way I’d lose my job. People are very sensitive.”

“You go to U.C.L.A.?”

“Junior College. I’m working up to U.C.L.A. Heck,” he said, “I’m only twenty-five, I’ve got plenty of time. ’Course I’d be way ahead of where I am now if I’d of caught on sooner. It took a hitch in the Army to jolt me out of my unthinking complacency.” He rolled the phrase lovingly on his tongue. “I woke up one night on a cold hill on the way back from the Yalu. And suddenly it hit me – wham! – I didn’t know what it was all about.”

“The war?”

“Everything. War and peace. Values in life.” He inserted a forkful of egg into his mouth and munched at me earnestly. “I realized I didn’t know who I was. I wore this kind of mask, you know, over my face and over my mind, this kind of blackface mask, and it got so I didn’t know who I was. I decided I had to find out who I was and be a man. If I could make it. Does that sound like a foolish thing for a person like me to decide?”

“It sounds sensible to me.”

“I thought so at the time. I still do. Another coffee?”

“Not for me, thanks. You have another.”

“No, I’m a one-cup man, too. I share your addiction for moderation.” He smiled at the sound of the words.

“What do you plan to do in the long run?”

“Teach school. Teach and coach.”

“It’s a good life.”

“You bet it is. I’m looking forward to it.” He paused, taking time out to look forward to it. “I love to tell people important things. Especially kids. I love to communicate values, ideas. What do you do, Mr. Archer?”

“I’m a private detective.”

Tobias looked a little disappointed in me. “Isn’t that kind of a dull life? I mean, it doesn’t bring you into contact with ideas very much. Not,” he added quickly, for fear he had hurt my feelings, “not that I place ideas above other values. Emotions. Action. Honorable action.”

“It’s a rough life,” I said. “You see people at their worst. How’s Bassett, by the way?”

“Dead to the world. I put him to bed. He sleeps it off without any trouble, and I don’t mind putting him to bed. He treats me pretty well.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Over three years. I started out in the snack bar here, and shifted over to lifeguard summer before last.

“You knew Gabrielle here, then.”

He answered prefunctorily: “I knew her. I told you that.”

“At the time that she was murdered?”

His face closed up entirely. The brightness left his eyes like something quick and timid retreating into its hole. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Nothing to do with you. Don’t run out on me, Joseph, just because I asked you a couple of questions.”

“I’m not running out.” But his voice was dull and singsong. “I already answered all the questions there are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, if you’re a detective. When Gabrielle – when Miss Torres was killed, I was the very first one that they arrested. They took me down to the sheriff’s station and questioned me in relays, all day and half the night.”

He hung his head under the weight of the memory. I hated to see him lose his fine élan.

“Why did they pick on you?”

“For no good reason.” He raised his hand and turned it before his eyes. It was burnished black in the fluorescent light.

“Didn’t they question anybody else?”

“Sure, when I proved to them I was at home all night. They picked up some winoes and sex deviates that live around Malibu and up the canyons, and some hoboes passing through. And they asked Miss Campbell some questions.”

“Hester Campbell?”

“Yes. She was the one that Gabrielle was supposed to be spending the evening with.”

“How do you know?”

“Tony said so.”

“Where did she really spend the evening?”

“How would I know that?”

“I thought you might have some idea.”

“You thought wrong, then.” His gaze, which had been avoiding mine, returned slowly to my face. “Are you reopening that murder case? Is that what Mr. Bassett hired you to do?”

“Not exactly. I started out investigating something else, but it keeps leading me back to Gabrielle. How well did you know her, Joseph?”

He answered carefully: “We worked together. Weekends, she took orders for sandwiches and drinks around the pool and in the cabañas . She was too young to serve the drinks herself, so I did that. Miss Torres was a very nice young lady to work with. I hated to see the thing that happened to her.”

“You saw what happened to her?”

“I don’t mean that. I didn’t see what happened to her when it happened. But I was right here in this room when Tony came up from the beach. Somebody shot her. I guess you know that, shot her and left her lying just below the Club. Tony lived down the shore a piece from here. He expected Gabrielle home by midnight. When she didn’t come home, he phoned the Campbell’s house. They said they hadn’t seen her, so he went out looking for her. He found her in the morning with bullet holes in her, the waves splashing up around her. She was supposed to be helping Mrs. Lamb that day, and Tony came up here first thing to tell Mrs. Lamb about it.”

Tobias licked his dry lips. His eyes looked through me at the past. “He stood right there in front of the counter. For a long time he couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t open his mouth to tell Mrs. Lamb that Gabrielle was dead. She could see that he needed comfort, though. She walked around the end of the counter and put her arms around him and held him for a while like he was a child. Then he told her. Mrs. Lamb sent me to call the police.”

“You called them yourself?”