Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“What was she doing here in Bella City?”

“I’d like to know myself. She claimed to be looking for a job, but I don’t think she was registered in California. I’d give a good deal for a social history on her.”

“She was from Detroit. Her family is poor and pretty ignorant. Does that help?”

“It doesn’t tell me much about her psychic life, does it?”

“Why is her psychic life important?”

“I could see that fear of illness wasn’t her only phobia. She had a deeper and more general fear which expressed itself in various ways. I tried to explain that to her, to give her some insight, but she wasn’t equal to it. She broke down and cried on my shoulder. Then it came out about her other fears.”

“What was she afraid of?”

He spread his hands like a lecturer. “It’s hard to say. I’m not a psychiatrist, though I do try to keep up with the literature.” He looked around his shabby waiting-room, and an obscure impulse made him add: “Which is more than you can say for my colleagues in this desolate town.”

“Was her fear real or imaginary?”

“Precisely the question I can’t answer, without knowing more about her.” His eyes clouded with thought. “Fear is always real subjectively. The true question about fear is whether it’s relevant, justified by the situation. In this case it seems to have been. Miss Champion believed that she was being hunted, that she was marked for death.”

“Did she give you any details?”

“No. I didn’t have time to gain her confidence. She failed to mention these persecution fears at all until her last visit, yesterday. You’ve been investigating her life and death, Mr. Archer. Was she really being hunted down by someone? Someone who finally caught her?”

“I don’t know. I was trailing her myself, and I did a poor job of it and she caught on. If she was full of fear, that might have been enough to set her off.” I asked a question I didn’t want to ask: “You don’t think she could have killed herself out of pure funk?”

Dr. Benning began to pace back and forth along a worn path that cut across the carpet from one door to the other. When he stopped an faced me, he looked ill at ease: “I’ll be frank with you. I was concerned about her in that sense, which is why I did my best to allay her fears.”

“You thought she had suicidal tendencies?”

“I took into account as a possibility. That’s all I can say. I’m no psychiatrist.” He spread his hands palms upward in a gesture of awkward helplessness. “Was the wound consistent with suicide?”

“It was pretty deep to be self-inflicted. Brake or the deputy coroner can answer that question better than I can. And Brake will want your statement.”

“I’m ready now, if you’re going to the station.”

I said I was. Benning went into the hall and got his hat. With his bald head covered he looked a good deal younger, but neither handsome nor well-heeled enough to be married to the woman he was married to.

He called up the stairs before we left: “I’m going out, Bess. Do you want anything?”

There was no answer.

The dirty-white brick city hall was distinguished from the surrounding store and office-buildings by a flagless flagpole standing in its patch of scorched grass. At the rear a concrete ramp sloped down from a paved parking lot to the scuffed green door of the police department. Benning turned at the door, smiling a sour private smile.

“The descent into Avernus,” he said.

Inside, in a green-walled corridor, a few wire-netted ceiling-bulbs maintained a bilious twilight. Under the brisk odors of floor oil and metal polish, the smells of fear and germicide, poverty and old sweat, kept up a complicated human murmur. In the furthest, dimmest corner, opposite a door marked DESK SERGEANT, a monumental shape sat on a wooden bench against the wall.

It belonged to a large Negro woman in a black cloth coat. The hair that showed under the side of her black felt hat was the color and texture of steel wool. I recognized her when she turned to look at us.

Benning spoke first – “Mrs. Norris!–” and went to her with his hands out.

She took them, raising her heavy, dark face to his. “I’m glad to see you, doctor.” Cross-hatched by shadow, her nose and mouth and chin looked like black stone rounded by years of weather. Only her eyes gleamed sorrowfully with life. “They’ve arrested Alex. They’re accusing him of murder.”

“It must be a mistake,” he said in a low bedside voice. “I know he’s a good boy.”

“He is a good boy.” She looked questioningly at me.

“This is Mr. Archer, Mrs. Norris. He’s working on the case. Mr. Archer has just been telling me that he thinks Alex is innocent.”

“Thank you, Mr. Archer, and pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“When was he arrested?”

“Early this morning, in the desert. He was trying to get out of the state. The car broke down. He was a young fool to run away in the first place. It’s twice as bad for him, now that they’ve brought him back.”

“Did you get him a lawyer?” Benning said.

“Yes, I’m having Mr. Santana. He’s up in the Sierra for the weekend, but his housekeeper got in touch with him.”

“He’s a good man, Santana.” Patting her shoulder, he moved towards the desk sergeant’s door. “I’ll talk to Brake, and see what I can do for Alex.”

“I know Alex has a good friend in you, doctor.”

Her words were hopeful, but her back and shoulders sloped in resignation. When she saw my intention of sitting down, she gathered her coat and shifted her body to one side, an involuntary sigh escaping from its concertina folds. I sat on a scrambled alphabet of initials carved in the soft wood of the bench.

“Do you know my son, Mr. Archer?”

“I talked to him a little last night.”

“And you don’t believe he’s guilty?”

“No. He seemed very fond of Lucy.”

She pursed up her heavy lips suspiciously, and said in a smaller voice: “Why do you say that?”

“He said it himself. Also, it showed in his actions.”

That silenced her for a while. Her diffident black hand touched my arm very softly and retreated to her bosom. A thin gold wedding-band was sunk almost out of sight in the flesh of its third finger. “You are on our side, Mr. Archer?”

“The side of justice when I can find it. When I can’t find it, I’m for the underdog.”

“My son is no underdog,” she said with a flash of pride.

“I’m afraid he’ll be treated like one. There’s a chance that Alex may be railroaded for this murder. The only sure way to prevent that is to pin it on the murderer. And you may be able to help me do that.” I took a deep breath.

“I believe that you are a righteous man, Mr. Archer.”

I let her believe it.

“You’re welcoming to anything I can say, or do,” she continued. “It is true, what you said before. My boy was crazy for that woman. He wanted to marry her. I did my best to prevent it, every way I could. Alex is only nineteen, much too young to think about getting married. I planned an education for him. I tried to tell him that a dark-complected man is nothing in this country without an education to stand on. And Lucy wasn’t the wife for him. She was older than Alex, five or six years older, and she was fast in her habits. I sent her away from my house yesterday, and then she got herself killed. I confess I made a mistake. I rose up in anger against her. She had no safe place to go. If I’d known what was going to come to her, she could have stayed on with us.”

“You don’t have to blame yourself. I think what happened to her was bound to happen.”

“Do you think that?”