Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“Which hotel?”

“I’m not sure. The sign was in the shape of a wineglass. Or a martini glass. The Dry Martini? Does that sound possible?”

“There is one in town. When were you there?”

“Some time in the course of the night. I’d lost all track of time. I must have spent the rest of the night looking for her. I saw a number of girls who resembled her, but they always turned out to be someone different. I kept blacking out and coming to in another place. It was awful, with those lights in my eyes and the people milling about. They thought I was drunk. Even the policeman thought I was drunk.”

“Forget it, George. It’s over now.”

“I won’t forget it. Hester is in danger. Isn’t that so?”

“She may be, I don’t know. Forget about her, too, why don’t you? Fall in love with the nurse or something. With your win-and-loss record, you ought to marry a nurse anyway. And, incidentally, you better lie down or the nurse will be reaming both of us.”

Instead of lying down, he sat up straighter, his shoulders arching under the hospital shirt. Between the bandages, his red eyes were fixed on my face. “Something has happened to Hester. You’re trying to keep me from knowing.”

“Don’t be crazy, kid. Relax. You’ve sparked enough trouble.”

He said: “If you won’t help me, I’m getting up and walking out of here now. Somebody has to do something.”

“You wouldn’t get far.”

For answer, he threw off the covers, swung his legs over the edge of the high bed, reached for the floor with his bare feet, and stood up tottering. Then he fell forward onto his knees, his head swinging loose, slack as a killed buck. I hoisted him back onto the bed. He lay inert, breathing rapidly and lightly. I pressed the nurse’s signal, and passed her on my way out.

THE DRY MARTINI was a small hotel on the edge of the older downtown gambling district. Two old ladies were playing Canasta for money in the boxlike knotty-pine lobby. The desk clerk was a fat man in a rayon jacket. His red face was set in the permanently jovial expression which people expect of fat men.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I have an appointment with Miss Campbell.”

“I’m very much afraid Miss Campbell hasn’t come in yet.”

“What time did she go out?”

He clasped his hands across his belly and twiddled his thumbs. “Let’s see, I came on at midnight, she checked in about an hour after that, stayed long enough to change her dress, and away she went again. Couldn’t’ve been much later than one.”

“You notice things.”

“A sexburger like her I notice.” The tip of his tongue protruded between his teeth, which were a good grade of plastic.

“Was anybody with her, going or coming?”

“Hope. She cue and went by herself. You’re a friend of hers, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Know her husband? Big guy with light-reddish hair?”

“I know him.”

“What goes with him? He came in here in the middle of the night looking like the wrath of God. Big welts on his face, blood in his hair, yackety-yacking like a psycho. He had some idea in his head that his wife was in trouble and I was mixed up in it. Claimed I knew where she was. I had a hell of a time getting rid of him.”

I looked at my watch. “She could be in trouble, at that. She’s been gone eleven hours.”

“Think nothing of it. They stay on the town for twenty-four, thirty-six hours at a time, some of them. Maybe she hit a winning streak and’s riding it out. Or maybe she had a date. Somebody must’ve clobbered the husband. He is her husband, isn’t he?”

“He is, and several people clobbered him. He has a way of leading with his chin. Right now he’s in the hospital, and I’m trying to find her for him.”

“Private dick?”

I nodded. “Do you have any idea where she went?”

“I can find out, maybe, if it’s important.” He looked me over, estimating the value of my clothes and the contents of my wallet. “It’s going to cost me something.”

“How much?”

“Twenty.” It was a question.

“Hey, I’m not buying you outright.”

“All right, ten,” he said quickly. “It’s better than getting poked in the eye with a carrot.” .

He took the bill and waddled into a back room, where I heard him talking on the telephone to somebody named Rudy. He came back looking pleased with himself: “I called her a taxi last night, was just talking to the dispatcher. He’s sending over the driver that took the call.”

“How much is he going to cost me?”

“That’s between you and him.”

I waited inside the glass front door, watching the noon traffic. It came from every state in the Union, but most of the license plates belonged to Southern California. This carney town was actually Los Angeles’s most farflung suburb.

A shabby yellow cab detached itself from the westbound stream and pulled up at the curb. The driver got out and started across the sidewalk. He wasn’t old, but he had a drooping face and posture like a hound that had been fed too long on scraps. I stepped outside.

“You the gentleman interested in the blondie?”

“I’m the one.”

“We’re not supposed to give out information about our fares. Unless it’s official–”

“A sawbuck official enough?”

He stood at attention and parodied a salute. “What was it you wanted to know, bud?”

“You picked her up what time?”

“One fifteen. I checked it on my sheet.”

“And dropped her where?”

He gave me a yellow-toothed grin and pushed his peaked cap back. It hung almost vertically on the peaked rear of his skull. “Don’t rush me, bud. Let’s see the color of your money first.”

I paid him.

“I set her out on the street,” he said. “I didn’t like to do it that time of night, but I guess she knew what she was doing.”

“Where was this?”

“It’s out past the Strip a piece. I can show you if you want. It’s a two-dollar fare.”

He opened the back door of his cab, and I got in. According to his identification card, his name was Charles Meyer. He told me about his troubles as we drove out past the Disney-Modern fronts where Hollywood and Times Square names decoyed for anonymous millionaires. Charles Meyer had many troubles. Drink had been his downfall. Women had wrecked his life. Gambling had ruined him. He told me in his singsong insistent whine: “Three months I been hacking in this goddam burg trying to get together a stake to buy some clothes and a crate, get out of here. Last week I thought I had it made, two hundred and thirty bucks and all my debts paid off. So I went into the drugstore to get my insulin and they give me my change in silver, two dollars and a four-bits piece, and just for kicks I fed them in the machines and that was going to be that.” He clucked. “There went two thirty. It took me a little over three hours to drop it. I’m a fast worker.”

“You could buy a bus ticket.”

“No, sir. I’m sticking here until I get a car, a postwar like the one I lost, and a suit of decent clothes. I’m not dragging my tail back to Dago looking like a bum.”

We passed several buildings under construction, identified by signs as additional club-hotels with fancy names. One of them was Simon Graff’s Casbah. Their girders rose on the edge of the desert like armatures for people to build their glad bad dreams on.

The Strip degenerated into a long line of motels clinging to the fringes of glamour. Charles Meyer U-turned and stopped in front of one of them, the Fiesta Motor Court. He draped his hound face over the seat back: “This is where I set her off.”

“Did anybody meet her?”

“Not that I saw. She was all by herself on the street when I pulled away,”