Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

I saw all this while I reached for my left armpit. I didn’t complete the motion. The day and the night and the day again had dulled me, and I wasn’t reacting well, but I knew that a gun in my hand was all they needed. I stood with my right hand frozen on my chest.

Frost smiled like a death’s-head against the aching blue sky. He had on a multicolored shot-silk shirt, a Panama hat with a matching colored band, and the kind of white flannels worn by tennis pro’s. The gun in his hand was a German machine pistol. He pressed its muzzle into my solar plexus and took my gun.

“Hands on your head. This is a real lovely surprise.”

I put my hands on my head. “I like it, too.”

“Now turn around.”

Mrs. Busch had got to her feet. She cried out: “Dirty bullying bastards!” and flung herself on the back of the nearest gunman. This happened to be Marfeld. He pivoted and slapped her face with the barrel of his gun. She fell turning and lay still on her face, her hair splashing out like fire. I said: “I’m going to kill you, Marfeld.”

He turned to me, his eyes joyous, if Marfeld could feel joy. “You and who else, boysie? You won’t be doing any pitching. You’re the catcher, see?”

He slapped the side of my head with the gun. The sky swayed like a blue balloon on a string.

Frost spoke sharply to Marfeld. “Lay off. And, for God’s sakes, lay off the woman.” He spoke to me more gently: “Keep your hands on your head and turn around.”

I did these things, tickled by worms of blood crawling through my hair and down the side of my face. Rina was sitting on the bed against the wall. Her legs were drawn up under her, and she was shivering.

“You disappoint me, doll,” Frost said. “You do too, Lew.”

“I disappoint myself.”

“Yeah, after all the trouble I went to, giving you good advice, and our years of friendly relationship.”

“You move me deeply. I haven’t been so deeply moved since I heard a hyena howl.”

Frost pushed the gun muzzle hard into my right kidney. Marfeld moved around me, swinging his shoulders busily. “That’s no way to talk to Mr. Frost.”

He swung the edge of his hand toward my throat. I pulled in my chin to protect my larynx and caught the blow on the mouth. I made a noise that sounded like gar and reached for him. Lashman locked my right arm and hung his weight on it. Marfeld’s right shoulder dropped. At the end of his hooked right arm, his fist swung into my belly. It doubled me over. I straightened, gulping down bitter regurgitated coffee.

“That’s enough of that,” Frost said. “Hold a gun on him, Lash.”

Frost moved past me to the bed. He walked slackly with his shoulders drooping. His voice was dry and tired: “You ready to go now, baby?”

“Where is my sister?”

“You know she had to leave the country. You want to do what’s right for her, don’t you?” He leaned toward her in a parody of wheedling charm.

She hissed at him, grinning with all her teeth: “I wouldn’t cross the street with you. You smell! I want my sister.”

“You’re coming if you have to be carried. So, on your horse.”

“No. Let me out of here. You killed my sister.”

She scrambled off the bed and ran for the door. Marfeld caught her around the waist and wrestled with her, grinning, his belly pressed to her hip. She slashed his cheek with her nails. He caught her by the hand and bent her fingers backward, struck savagely at her head with the flat of his hand. She stood submissive against the ghastly wall.

The gun at my back had lost contact, leaving a cold vacuum. I whirled. Lashman had been watching the girl being hurt with a voyeur’s hot, dreamy eyes. I forced his gun down before he fired. I got the gun away from him and swung it at the left front corner of his skull. He crumpled in the doorway.

Marfeld was on my back. He was heavy and strong, with an innate sense of leverage. His arm looped around my neck and tightened. I swung him against the door frame. He almost pulled my head off, but he fell on top of Lashman, his face upturned. With the butt of the gun, I struck him between the eyes.

I turned toward Frost in the instant that he fired, and flung myself sideways. His slugs whanged into the wall wide of my head. I shot him in the right arm. His gun clanked on the floor. I got my free hand on it and stood up and backed to the wall and surveyed the room.

The air-air-conditionerthumped and whirred like a wounded bird in the wall behind my head. The girl leaned white-faced and still on the opposite wall. Frost sat on the floor between us, holding his right arm with his left hand. Blood laced his fingers. He looked from them to me. The fear of death which never left his eyes had taken over the rest of his face. In the doorway, Marfeld lay with his head on Lashman’s chest. His veined eyeballs were turned up and in toward the deep blue dent in his forehead. Except for his hoarse breathing and the noise of the air-conditioner, the room was very tranquil.

Mrs. Busch appeared in the doorway, weaving slightly. One of her eyes was swollen and black, and her smiling mouth was bloody. She held a .45 automatic in both hands. Frost looked into its roving eye and tried to crawl under the bed. It was too low to receive him. He lay beside it, whimpering: “Please. I’m a sick man. Don’t shoot.”

The redheaded woman laughed. “Look at him crawl. Listen to him whine.”

“Don’t kill him,” I said. “Strange as it may seem, I have a use for him.”

RINA DROVE Frost’s Cadillac. I rode in the back seat with Frost. She had made a pressure bandage and a sling for his arm out of several Dewdrop Inn bath towels. He sat and nursed his arm, refusing to talk, except to give directions.

Beyond the airport, we turned right toward mountains which lay naked and wrinkled under the sun. The road climbed toward the sun, and as it climbed it dwindled, changing to gravel. We came over the first low hump and overlooked a white-floored valley where nothing grew.

Near the crest of the inner slope, a concrete building with a rounded roof was set into the side of the hill. Squat and windowless, it resembled a military strongpoint. It was actually a disused ammunition dump.

Frost said: “She’s in there.”

Rina looked over her shoulder. Her nervous foot on the power brakes jolted the car to a stop. We slipped out under the brilliant sky. A jet track crossed it like a long white scar. I told Rina to stay in the car.

“You can put your gun away,” Frost said. “There’s nobody in there but her.”

I made him climb ahead of me, up the slope to the single door of the building. Sheathed with rusting steel, the door swung half open. A broken padlock hung from its hasp. I pulled the door wide, holding my gun on Frost. A puff of warm air came from the interior. It smelled like an oven where meat had been scorched.

Frost hung back. I forced him to enter ahead of me. We stood on a narrow platform, peering down into dimness. The concrete floor of the dump was about six feet below the level of the entrance. Framed in light, our shadows fell across it. I pushed Frost out of the rectangle of light, and saw what lay on the floor: a wizened thing like a mummy, blackened and consumed by fire instead of by time.

“You did this to her?”

Frost said without conviction: “Hell, no, it was her husband. You should be talking to him. He followed her here from L.A., did you know that? Knocked her off and set fire to the body.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Frost. I’ve been talking to the husband. You flew him here in Stern’s plane to frame him for the killing. You probably brought the body on the same flight. The frame didn’t take, though, and it’s not going to. None of your dirty little plans is working out.”