Росс Макдональд - Find a Victim

Her gaze had returned from the interior of her dream. She wasn’t as far out of focus as I’d thought. Suspicion flicked a bright double tongue from the black holes in the centers of her eyes. “Tony isn’t dead. You’re trying to con me.”

“Would you like to pay a visit to the morgue?”

“Don didn’t say anything. He would of told me if Tony got it. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Why would he tell you what you already knew? You fingered Tony, didn’t you?”

“I did not. I didn’t even set eyes on him since last Sunday night. I’ve been home here all day today.” She rose and stood over me, her face drawn and jaundiced. “Is somebody trying to frame me? Who are you, anyway?”

“A friend of Don’s. I talked to him tonight.”

“Don wouldn’t do that to me. Is he arrested?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you sluff?”

“Oh sure,” I said. “That’s why I brought you those reefers.”

“Where did Don get them?” Her black gaze slanted down at me from under her broad low brow.

“From Bozey. Don couldn’t bring them himself, so he sent me.”

“Funny he never mentioned yon.”

“He doesn’t tell you everything.”

“No. I guess he doesn’t.”

She crossed the room to the venetian-blinded window and ran her fingers idly down the slats. She returned with dragging feet and made herself small in the corner of the divan, hugging her knees to her breast.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “You tell me Tony’s dead and Don’s been stringing me. Why should I listen to you?”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Are you supposed to be in on the deal?”

“I thought I was. But it looks as if he’s been stringing both of us. The way he laid the blueprint out for me, you were the one that was going to finger Tony.”

“That was the original plan,” she said. “I was supposed to flag him down. No shooting, understand – I wouldn’t go for that. Just stop the truck on the road and let the others take over.”

“Don and Bozey?”

“Yeah. Only they changed the plan. Don didn’t want me sticking my neck out, see.” She stroked her round smooth neck, unconsciously. “And then something came up – something that Tony told me Sunday night. He was drunk when he told me, I didn’t believe it at the time. He was always full of blow-top tales about her. But Don believed it when I told him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“This tale about Anne Meyer.”

“Try it on me.”

She pinched the skin of her throat between thumb and forefinger and looked at me sideways. “You ask an awful lot of questions. How do I know you’re not a cop? How do I know those reefers weren’t a come-on?”

I stood up, feigning anger, and moved to the door. “Have it your way, sister. I can take so much, but when you call me sluff–”

She followed me. “Wait a sec. You don’t have to flip your lid. Okay, you’re a friend of Don’s, you’re in on the deal. What are you doing now?”

“I’m getting out. I don’t like the smell of it.”

“Do you have a car?”

“It’s outside.”

“Will you drive me some place?”

“If you say so. Where?”

“I don’t know where. But I’m not going to sit here and wait to be picked off.” She went to an inner door and turned with her hand on the knob. “I’ll shower and put some clothes on. It won’t take a minute.” Her smile went on and off like an electric sign.

I waited for fifteen minutes, lulled by the splattering rush of the shower behind the wall. I smoked an old-fashioned cigarette made of tobacco and leafed through the “romance” magazines on the divan. I Was a Love Decoy. My Lost Weekend. Do Men Have Forbidden Desires? I Was an Old Man’s Plaything. The cover girls all looked like Jo, in one way or another. She was legion.

It hit me finally that her shower-bath had lasted much too long. I walked into her bedroom without knocking. The bureau drawers were hanging open, empty except for a few soiled clothes. I opened the bathroom door. The shower was running full force into the bathtub, but there was no girl under it.

I went through the dark kitchen, out the back door, down a flight of wooden steps into a walled alley. A little light filtered down through the porous sky. It showed me a fat old Negro wedged in a sitting position between two garbage cans against the wall. With his head hanging sideways and his legs spraddled, he looked like a huge black baby left on the world’s doorstep. I shook him and smelled the rotgut and let him sleep.

I went toward the mouth of the alley, a high pale rectangle filled with diluted light from the corner streetlamp. A man’s figure entered its frame. Wide-shouldered and narrow-hipped in a leather windbreaker, he moved with a tomcat’s grace and silence. I caught a glimpse of his face. It was young and pale. Dark red hair hung down over his temples in lank wings. He pushed it back with one hand. His other hand was hidden under the windbreaker. The wall’s shadow fell across him.

“Did you happen to see a girl come out of here?”

“What girl?”

“A little brunette. She’s probably carrying a suitcase.”

“Yeah. I saw her.”

He moved along the wall toward me, so close that I could see his eyes and the frightened savage lostness in them.

“Which way did she go?”

“That depends on what you want from her. What do you want from her?”

His voice was quiet and calm, but I could sense the one-track fury behind it. He was one of the dangerous boys, born dry behind the ears and weaned on fury and grief.

“You wouldn’t be Bozey?”

He didn’t answer in words. His fist came out from under the windbreaker, wearing something bright, and smashed at the side of my head.

My legs forgot about me. I sat on the asphalt against the wall and looked up at his armed right fist, a shining steel hub on which the night revolved. His face leaned over me, stark and glazed with hatred.

“Bow down, God damn you, skiff. I’m Bozey all right. Bow down and kiss my feet.”

His bright fist drove downward at my face. I slipped the punch somehow and heard metal jar on stone. I tried to get to my feet. But my legs were made of old rope and worn-out rubber. The third blow found me, and the night revolved more quickly, like dirty water going down a drain.

When I came to, I was in my car, trying to turn the trunk key in the ignition. The street was deserted, and that was just as well. I drove like a drunk for a couple of blocks, weaving from curb to curb. Then my vision cleared and steadied.

Crossing the main street, I saw my bleeding face in the mirror over the windshield. It looked curiously lopsided. I glanced at my wristwatch to see what time it was. My wrist was bare. I shook myself down and found that my wallet was missing. But my .38 was still in the glove compartment. I transferred it to the side pocket of my jacket.

Kerrigan’s house stood on a slope in the northeastern part of the city. I U-turned in the intersection above it and parked in the slanting street. It was a street of elderly homes with spacious lawns, shadowed by trees and well-clipped shrubbery. Seen from above, the tiled roofs floated in a dark green cascade of foliage. It was getting late, and most of the houses were dark. Kerrigan’s wasn’t. The red Ford convertible was standing in front of it.

I left the sidewalk, waded through dew-dense grass to the side of the next house, and stepped over a low field-stone wall into Kerrigan’s yard. The terraced lawn was splashed with light from the windows. There was a rumor of voices inside the house. The windows were too high for me to see through. I moved along the wall toward the front. There were two voices, a man’s and a woman’s. The man’s voice was pitched almost as high as the woman’s.