Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“I’ll give you credit for one thing, Clarence. It took guts to tackle Stern, even if I did soften him up for you. More guts than Graff and his private army had.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Bassett said. “You know I didn’t kill him. You saw him leave.”

“You followed him out, though, didn’t you? And you didn’t come back for a while. You had time to slug him in the parking-lot, bundle him into his car; and drive it up the bluff where you could slit his throat and push him into the sea. That was quite an effort for a man your age. You must have wanted this gun back very badly. Were you so hungry for a hundred grand?”

Bassett looked up past me at the open safe. “Money had nothing to do with it.” It was his first real admission. “I didn’t know he had that gun in his car until he tried to pull it on me. I hit him with a tire-iron and knocked him out. It was kill or be killed. I killed him in self-defense.”

“You didn’t cut his throat in self-defense.”

“He was an evil man, a criminal, meddling in matters he didn’t understand. I destroyed him as you would destroy a dangerous animal.” He was proud of killing Stern. The pride shone in his face. It made him foolish. “A gangster and drugpeddler – is he more important than I? I’m a civilized man, I come from a good family.”

“So you cut Stern’s throat. You shot Lance Leonard’s eye out. You beat in Hester Campbell’s skull with a poker. There are better ways to prove you’re civililized.”

“They deserved it.”

“You admit you killed them?”

“I admit nothing. You have no right to bullyrag me. You can’t prove a thing against me.”

“The police will be able to. They’ll trace your movements, turn up witnesses to pin you down, find the gun you used on Leonard.”

“Will they really?” He had enough style left to be sardonic.

“Sure they will. You’ll show them where you ditched it. You’ve started to tattle on yourself already. You’re no hard-faced pro, Clarence, and you shouldn’t try to act like one. Last night when it was over and the three of them were dead, you had to knock yourself out with a bottle. You couldn’t face the thought of what you had done. How long do you think you can hold out sitting in a cell without a bottle?”

“You hate me,” Bassett said. “You hate me and despise me, don’t you?”

“I don’t think I’ll answer that question. Answer one of mine. You’re the only one who can. What sort of man would use a sick woman as his cat’s-paw? What sort of man would cut a young girl like Gabrielle off from the light so he could collect a bounty on her death?”

Bassett made an abrupt squirming gesture of denial. The movement involved the entire upper half of his body, and resembled a convulsion. He said through rigid jaws: “You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Then straighten me out.”

“What’s the use? You would never understand.”

“I understand more than you think. I understand that you spied on Graff when his wife was in the sanitarium. You saw him using his cabaña for meetings with Gabrielle. You undoubtedly knew about the gun in his locker. Everything you knew or learned, you passed on to Isobel Graff. Probably you helped her to run away from the sanitarium, and provided her with the necessary pass-keys. It all adds up to remote-control murder. That much I understand. I don’t understand what you had against Gabrielle. Did you try for her yourself and lose her to Graff? Or was it just that she was young and you were getting old, and you couldn’t stand to see her living in the world?”

He stammered: “I had nothing to do with her death.” But he turned in his chair as if a powerful hand had him by the nape of the neck. He looked at Isobel Graff for the first time, quickly and guiltily.

She was sitting upright now, as still as a statue. A statue of a blind and schizophrenic Justice, stonily returning Bassett’s look: “You did so, Clarence.”

“No, I mean I didn’t plan it that way. I had no idea of blackmail. I didn’t want to see her killed.”

“Who did you want to see killed?”

“Simon,” Isobel Graff said. “Simon was to be the one. But I spoiled everything, didn’t I, Clare? It was my fault it all went wrong.”

“Be quiet, Belle.” It was the first time that Bassett had spoken to her directly. “Don’t say anything more.”

“You intended to shoot your husband, Mrs. Graff?”

“Yes. Clare and I were going to be married.”

Graff let out a snort, half angry and half derisive. She turned on him: “Don’t you dare laugh at me. You locked me up and stole my property. You treated me like a chattel-beast.” Her voice rose. “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you.”

“So you and your moth-eaten fortune-hunter could live happily ever after?”

“We could have been happy,” she said. “Couldn’t we, Clare? You love me, don’t you, Clare? You’ve loved me all these years.”

“All these years,” he said. But his voice was empty of feeling, his eyes were dead. “Now if you love me, you’ll be quiet, Belle.” His tone, brusque and unfriendly, denied his words.

He had rebuffed her, and she had a deep, erratic intuition. Her mood swung violently. “I know you,” she said in a hoarse monotone. “You want to blame me for everything. You want them to put me in the forever room and throw the key away. But you’re to blame, too. You said I could never be convicted of any crime. You said if I killed Simon in fragrante – in flagrante – the most they could do was lock me up for a while. Didn’t you say that, Clare? Didn’t you?”

He wouldn’t answer her or look at her. Hatred blurred his features like a tight rubber mask. She turned to me: “So you see, it was Simon I meant to kill. His chippie was just an animal he used – a little fork-legged animal. I wouldn’t kill a pretty little animal.”

She paused, and said in queer surprise: “But I did kill her. I shot her and smashed the connections. It came to me in the dark behind the door. It came to me like a picture of sin that she was the source of the evil. And she was the one the dirty old man was making passes at. So I smashed the connections. Clare was angry with me. He didn’t see the wicked things she did.”

“Wasn’t he with you?”

“Afterwards he was. I was trying to wipe up the blood – she bled on my nice clean floor. I was trying to wipe up the blood when Clare came in. He must have been waiting outside, and seen the chippie crawling out the door. She crawled away like a little white dog and died. And Clare was angry with me. He bawled me out.”

“How many times did you shoot her, Isobel?”

“Just once.”

“In what part of the body?”

She hung her head in ghastly modesty. “I don’t like to say, in public. I told you before.”

“Gabrielle Torres was shot twice, first in the upper thigh, then in the back. The first wound wasn’t fatal, it wasn’t even serious. The second wound pierced her heart. It was the second shot that killed her.”

“I only shot her once.”

“Didn’t you follow her down to the beach and shoot her again in the back?”

“No.” She looked at Bassett. “Tell him, Clare. You know I couldn’t have done that.”

Bassett glared at her without speaking. His eyes bulged like tiny pale balloons inflated by a pressure inside his skull.

“How would he know, Mrs. Graff?”

“Because he took the gun. I dropped it on the cabaña floor. He picked it up and went out after her.”

The pressure forced words from Bassett’s mouth. “Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy – hallucinating. I wasn’t within ten miles–”

“You were so, Clare,” she said quietly.