Росс Макдональд - Find a Victim

“Where did she fall?”

“I’ll show you.”

We climbed the far side of the hollow, where the lane looped around and swung back downhill. He pointed into the shallow ditch beside it. It was overgrown with manzanita bushes whose branches were red and shiny as if they had been freshly dipped in blood.

“Right about here,” he said. “He was in the car already when she fell. He didn’t get out and help her, either, fat slob that he is.”

“You’re not very fond of Kerrigan, are you?”

“No sir, I’m not. I’ve no cause to be.”

“What was the bone you had to pick with him?”

“I don’t much like to talk about it. It’s a family affair, having to do with my granddaughter. She’s only a young girl–”

He saw that I wasn’t listening, and broke off. My eye had caught a glint of something among the manzanitas. It was the heel of a woman’s shoe, wedged in the crack between two granite boulders. Several bright bent nails protruded from the top. I pried it loose with my fingers: a heel of medium height, tipped with rubber and covered with scuffed brown leather.

“Looks as if she lost a heel,” he said. “I noticed she walked peculiar when she got up. Thought maybe she hurt her leg.”

“Where did they go from here?”

“There’s only the one way to go.” He pointed downhill.

From where we stood, I could see the mercury trickle of the lake between the trees. The sun hung over it like a great silent blowtorch. Below the white lip of the dam, the powerhouse and its company town were hidden. The purple walls of the canyon beyond sloped down and away, dissolving in hot white distance. Under the white valley haze Las Cruces lay out of sight. It was hard to imagine from the cool forest height, but I knew that it was there, with fifty thousand people sweltering in its streets. I looked down at the leather object in my hand, and wondered which of the fifty thousand was Cinderella.

I took MacGowan home. He lived in a small brown cottage behind the Inn. It had a peaked roof like a Swiss chalet, and fading yellow sunflowers painted on the front door. To my surprise, he invited me in for a cup of tea.

He pronounced it “tay,” as if he liked the Old World flavor of the word. There was something Old World, too, about his living-room, which was crowded with ancient tobacco-colored furniture. Some outdated copies of Punch lay on the table beside the battery radio. There were pictures on the wall from the Illustrated London News , and a few old photographs.

One was an enlarged snapshot of a muscular man in shirtsleeves who had his arm around a sunbonneted woman. They were standing in front of a white frame house, smiling at each other. Though the house was ugly and boxlike, the people poorly dressed, there was something idyllic about the scene. The smiles had a prewar innocence. I looked more closely at them and saw that the man was MacGowan, beardless and in his prime.

The old man limped out of the kitchen. “Kettle will soon be boiling. Have a seat.”

“You’re very kind.”

“The shoe’s on the other foot. I welcome a visitor. I haven’t had one for a month, and it’s lonely living since my old woman died.” He indicated the enlargement with his thumb. “That’s her and I, taken twenty-five years ago. I wasn’t always a kind of a hermit like I am now.”

“You stay up here all winter by yourself?”

“I do.”

“I couldn’t stand the loneliness.”

He sat down stiffly in an old plush armchair, which emitted a puff of dust under his weight. Some of the dust was caught in the light from the window, and swirled there like boiling gold.

“There’s different kinds of loneliness, mister – what did you say your name was?”

“Lew Archer.”

“Different kinds of loneliness,” he repeated. “The kind you make for yourself is the best. You get a certain satisfaction out of living alone, not needing anybody else, especially when you’re old. You know, a man gets weary batting around in the world. I’ve done a lot of things in my time, sailed A. B. from Glasgow, raised wheat in Manitoba, mined silver in Nevada and copper in the Traverse mines. I was a janitor in San Berdoo before I came up here. But the city never suited me just right. I used to go back to Traverse just about every year for my vacation.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of Traverse. Is it in California?”

“Yeah, over near the Nevada border.” He pointed at the enlarged snapshot again. “That picture was taken in Traverse in the old days, when there were more than a thousand souls in the place. It’s just a ghost town now, nothing left but the buildings, and most of them are sliding downhill. The mine’s worked out, you see. Last time I was there, three-four years ago, there wasn’t a single living human being.” He smiled reminiscently. “It suited me fine after San Berdoo.”

“Did you have any other family besides your wife?” I wanted to get back to the subject of his granddaughter.

“I had a son,” he said. “He’d be about your age now. He was killed in an accident at Terminal Island. They gave him a draft exemption because he worked in the shipyards, and then they went ahead and killed him anyway. I didn’t see much of him for a long time before that, though. He took up with a Filipino girl, and I didn’t think too well of the idea.”

His mind veered in the light and shifting wind of his own feelings: “It wasn’t Jo’s fault she grew up a little wild. Her mother married again – another Filipino this time – and they let the lass run those Long Beach streets when she should of been in school.”

“You’re talking about your granddaughter?”

“Yes. She’s living in Las Cruces now. You don’t happen to know her?”

“I may at that,” I said casually. “What’s her name?”

“I disremember her married name, but she calls herself Jo Summer most of the time. It’s kind of a stage name, she wants to be a professional singer. Maybe you’ve heard her sing at that nightclub in Las Cruces – the Golden Slipper?”

“No, but I’ve met her.”

He leaned forward in the creaking armchair. “What do you think of the place she’s working in? It’s a pretty low-down dive, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“That’s what I told her,” he said. “I told her no young married woman should take a job in a public bar like that. Not with a boss like Kerrigan anyway. But she wouldn’t listen. I’m too old and she’s too young, and we can’t talk to each other. She thinks I’m an old fool. Maybe I am, but I can’t help worrying about her. Was she all right when you saw her?”

I didn’t have to answer. The kettle chirred and began to whistle. MacGowan went into the kitchen. While he made the tea, I tried to figure out what to say to him.

He brewed it black and bitter, like my thoughts.

“This is good tea,” was what I finally said.

He blinked in acknowledgment over his tilted cup. It was a decent piece of china, decorated with an old-fashioned pink-and-gold flower pattern. He set it down gently on the table beside him.

“You ought to hear her sing. Not that jazzy stuff she sings in the nightclub, but some of the old songs, Annie Laurie, Comin’ through the Rye . I got her to sing them for me when she was visiting here.”

“When was that?”

“Last month. She came up the hill around the first of September, brought her husband with her.” His black eyes fastened on my face. “Do you know her husband, too? I don’t recall his name.”

“What does he look like?”

“I didn’t like the looks of him, to tell the truth. He’s a redheaded lad–”

“Bozey?”