Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“Carl Walther made it for me, in Germany, many years ago.”

“I’m talking about the last twenty-four hours. Where did you get it this time?”

He answered carefully: “I have had it in my possession continuously for over twenty years.”

“The hell you have. Stern had it last night before he was killed. Did you kill him for it?”

“That is ridiculous.”

“Did you have him killed?”

“I did not.”

“Somebody knocked off Stern to get hold of this gun. You must know who it was, and you might as well tell me. Everything’s going to come out now. Not even your kind of money can stop it.”

“Is money what you want from me? You can have money.” His voice dragged with contempt – for me, and perhaps for himself.

“I’m not for sale like Marfeld,” I said. “Your boss thug tried to buy me. He’s in the Vegas clink with a body to explain.”

“I know that,” Graff said. “But I am talking about a very great deal of money. A hundred thousand dollars in cash. Now. Tonight.”

“Where would you get that much in cash tonight?’

“From Clarence Bassett. He has it in his office safe. I paid it to him this evening. It was the price he set on the pistol. Take it away from him, and you can have it.”

THERE WAS LIGHT in Bassett’s office. I knocked so hard that I bruised my knuckles. He came to the door in shirt sleeves. His face was putty-colored, with blue hollows under the eyes. His eyes had a Lazarus look, and hardly seemed to recognize me.

“Archer? What’s the trouble, man?”

“You’re the trouble, Clarence.”

“Oh, I hope not.” He noticed the couple behind me, and did a big take. “You’ve found her, Mr. Graff. I’m so glad.”

“Are you?” Graff said glumly. “Isobel has confessed everything to this man. I want my money back.”

Bassett’s face underwent a process of change. The end product of the process was a bright, nervous grin which resembled the rictus of a dead horse.

“Am I to understand this? I return the money, and we drop the whole matter? Nothing more will be said?”

“Plenty more will be said. Give him his money, Clarence.”

He stood tense in the doorway, blocking my way. Visions of possible action flitted behind his pale-blue eyes and died. “It’s not here.”

“Open the safe and we’ll see for ourselves.”

“You have no warrant.”

“I don’t need one. You’re willing to co-operate. Aren’t you?”

He reached up and plucked at his neck above the open collar of his button-down shirt, stretching the loose skin and letting it pull itself back into place. “This has been a bit of a shock. As a matter of fact, I am willing to co-operate. I have nothing to hide.”

He turned abruptly, crossed the room, and took down the photograph of the three divers. A cylindrical safe was set in the wall behind it. I covered him with the target pistol as he spun the bright chrome dials. The gun he had used on Leonard was probably at the bottom of the sea, but there could be another gun in the safe. All the safe contained was money, though – bundles of money done up in brown bank paper.

“Take it,” Graff said. “It is yours.”

“It would only make a bum out of me. Besides, I couldn’t afford to pay the tax on it.”

“You are joking. You must want money. You work for money, don’t you?”

“I want it very badly,” I said. “But I can’t take this money. It wouldn’t belong to me, I would belong to it. It would expect me to do things, and I would have to do them. Sit on the lid of this mess of yours, the way Marfeld did, until dry rot set in.”

“It would be easy to cover up,” Graff said.

He turned a basilisk eye on Clarence Bassett. Bassett flattened himself against the wall. The fear of death invaded his face and galvanized his body. He swatted the gun out of my hand, went down on his hands and knees, and got a grip on the butt. I snaked it away from him before he could consolidate his grip, lifted him by the collar, and set him in the chair at the end of his desk.

Isobel Graff had collapsed in the chair behind the desk. Her head was thrown back, and her undone hair poured like black oil over the back of the chair. Bassett avoided looking at her. He sat hunched far over to one side away from her, trembling and breathing hard.

“I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of. I shielded an old friend from the consequences of her actions. Her husband saw fit to reward me.”

“That’s the gentlest description of blackmail I ever heard. Not that blackmail covers what you’ve done. Are you going to tell me you knocked off Leonard and Stern to protect Isobel Graff?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“When you tried to frame Isobel for the murder of Hester Campbell, was that part of your protection service?”

“I did nothing of the sort.”

The woman echoed him: “Clare did nothing of the sort.”

I turned to her. “You went to her house in Beverly Hills yesterday afternoon?”

She nodded.

“Why did you go there?”

“Clare told me she was Simon’s latest chippie. He’s the only one who tells me things, the only one who cares what happens to me. Clare said if I caught them together, I could force Simon to give me a divorce. Only she was already dead. I walked into the house, and she was already dead.” She spoke resentfully, as though Hester Campbell had deliberately stood her up.

“How did you know where she lived?”

“Clare told me.” She smiled at him in bright acknowledgment. “Yesterday morning when Simon was having his dip.”

“All this is utter nonsense,” Bassett said. “Mrs. Graff is imagining it. I didn’t even know where she lived, you can bear witness to that.”

“You wanted me to believe you didn’t but you knew, all right. You’d had her traced, and you’d been threatening her. You couldn’t afford to let George Wall get to her while she was still alive. But you wanted him to get to her eventually. Which is where I came in. You needed someone to lead him to her and help pin the frame on him. Just in case it didn’t take, you sent Mrs. Graff to the house to give you double insurance. The second frame was the one that worked – at least, it worked for Graff and his brilliant cohorts. They gave you a lot of free assistance in covering up that killing.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Graff said behind me. “I’m not responsible for Frost’s and Marfeld’s stupidity. They acted without consulting me.” He was standing by himself, just inside the door, as if to avoid any part in the proceedings.

“They were your agents,” I told him, “and you’re responsible for what they did. They’re accessory after the fact of murder. You should be handcuffed to them.”

Bassett was encouraged by our split. “You’re simply fishing,” he said. “I was fond of Hester Campbell, as you know, I had nothing against the girl. I had no reason to harm her.”

“I don’t doubt you were fond of her, in some peculiar way of your own. You were probably in love with her. She wasn’t in love with you, though. She was out to take you if she could. She ran out on you in September, and took along your most valuable possession.”

“I’m a poor man. I have no valuable possessions.”

“I mean this gun.” I held the Walther pistol out of his reach. “I don’t know exactly how you got it the first time. I think I know how you got it the second time. It’s been passed around quite a bit in the last four months, since Hester Campbell stole it from your safe. She turned it over to her friend Lance Leonard. He wasn’t up to handling the shakedown himself, so he co-opted Stern, who had experience in these matters. Stern also had connections which put him beyond the reach of Graff’s strong-arm boys. But not beyond your reach.