Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“If you were, you couldn’t help us.”

“Nobody asked for any help from me. Who wants any help from me?”

“I do.”

“You don’t believe I killed her?”

“No.”

He looked at me for maybe half a minute, his gaze shifting in heartbeat rhythm from one of my eyes to the other. “She didn’t do it to herself, did she? Mister? You don’t think Lucy – cut her own throat?” He whispered the question so as not to embarrass the dead woman behind him.

“It isn’t likely. The suggestion has been made. What made you think of it?”

“No reason, except she was scared. She was awful scared yesterday. That’s why I loaned her the knife, when she left our house. She asked me for something to protect herself with. I had no gun or anything to give her.” His voice dropped apologetically. “I gave her the knife.”

“The one she was killed with?”

“Yes. They showed it to me this morning. It was a little bolo knife that my father sent me from the South Pacific.”

“She was carrying the knife?”

“Yessir, in her purse. She had a big purse. She put it in her purse when I gave it to her, before she went away from the house. If they caught her, she said she would leave her mark on them.” A frown of grief knitted his eyebrows.

“Who was she afraid of?”

“Men following her. It started Thursday, when she came back on the bus from Arroyo Beach. She said this man got off the bus and trailed her home. I thought at first she was spinning me a tale, trying to be mysterious. Then the next day I saw him myself when she came home from lunch. He was lurking around our street, and that night he came and visited her right in our house. I asked her about him yesterday, and she said that he was a crooked detective. That he was trying to make her do something against her will, but she wouldn’t do it.”

“Did she mention his name?”

“She said his name was Desmond, Julian Desmond. The next day another man was after her. I didn’t see him. Lucy saw him, though. And there was the trouble at our house, and she moved out.”

I swallowed the bitter taste of guilt in my mouth. “Was she planning to leave town?”

“She couldn’t make up her mind before she left. She said she’d phone me. Then when she did phone, she was at the station. There was no train out for a couple of hours, and men there were spying on her. She said I should come with the car. I picked her up at the station and we got away from them, on the old airport road. We parked behind the airport fence, and we talked. She was shivering scared. Right there and then we decided to get married. I thought if we stayed together, I could defend her.” His voice sank deep into his chest, almost out of hearing. “I didn’t do so good.”

“None of us did.”

“She wanted to leave town right away. First we had to go back to the Mount view Motel to get her bags.”

“Did she have her motel-key?”

“She said she lost it.”

“Didn’t give it to you?”

“Why would she give it to me? I couldn’t go in there with her. Even if I was light enough to pass, like her, I wouldn’t do it. She went in there by herself. She never came out again. Somebody was waiting in there for her, and took the knife away from her and used it on her.”

“Who was waiting?”

“Julian Desmond maybe. She wouldn’t do what he wanted. Or the other one that was after her.”

I was ashamed to tell him that I was the other one. His shoulders were slumped, and the flesh around his mouth hung almost stupidly. His moral strength was running out again. I placed Schwartz’s chair for him and eased him into it: “Sit down, Alex. You’ve covered the big points against you. There are a few little points left. Money is one of them. What were you intending to marry on?”

“I have some money of my own.”

“How much?”

“Forty-five dollars. I made it picking tomatoes.”

“Not much to get married on.”

“I aimed to get a job. My back is strong.” There was a sullen pride in his voice, but he wasn’t meeting my eyes. “Lucy could work too. She worked as a nurse before.”

“Where?”

“She didn’t tell me where.”

“She must have told you something.”

“No sir. I never asked her.”

“Did she have some money?”

“I didn’t ask her. I wouldn’t take money from a woman anyway.”

“If you earned it, though,” I said. “Didn’t she say she’d cut you in if you got her safe out of town?”

“Cut me in?”

“On the reward,” I said. “The Singleton reward.”

His black gaze climbed slowly to the level of my eyes, and quickly dropped. He said to the floor: “Lucy didn’t have to pay me money to marry her.”

“Where were you going to get married? Where were you going to drive to yesterday?”

“Las Vegas or someplace. It didn’t matter. Anyplace.”

“Arroyo Beach?”

He didn’t answer. I had pushed him too fast and too far. Looking down at the locked round impenetrable skull, I understood Brake’s routine and desperate anger after thirty years of trying to fit human truth into the square-cut legal patterns handed down for his use by legislators and judges. And thinking of Brake’s anger, I lost my own.

“Listen, Alex. We’re going back to the beginning again. Lucy was murdered. We both want to find the murderer and see him punished. You have more reason than I have to want that. You claim you were in love with her.”

“I was!” The drill had struck the nerve.

“That’s one reason, then. You have another reason: Unless we find the real killer, you’ll be spending years of your life in jail.”

“I don’t care what happens to me now.”

“Think about Lucy. When you were waiting for her at the motel, somebody took that knife and cut her throat with it. Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“What did Julian Desmond want her to do?”

“Be a witness for him,” he answered slowly.

“A witness to what?”

“I don’t know what.”

“A murder,” I said. “Was it a murder?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It was a murder, wasn’t it? He wanted her to help him collect the reward. But she thought she could go it alone, and get the reward money for herself. Isn’t that the reason she was killed?”

“I didn’t think it out, mister.”

“But you knew about the reward money? You knew she hoped to collect it.”

“I never hoped to share in it,” he said doggedly.

“She went to Arroyo Beach on Thursday to see his mother, and lost her nerve at the last minute. Isn’t that the truth?”

“Yes, sir. I gathered that.”

“She was going to try again yesterday.”

“Maybe she was. I had nothing to do with any murder. Lucy didn’t either.”

“But she knew what happened to Singleton.”

“She knew something.”

“And you know something, too.”

“She let on about it to me. I didn’t ask her. I didn’t want to have any part of it. She told it to me anyway.”

“What did she tell you, Alex?”

“A man shot him. A crazy man shot him and he died. She told me that.”

Schwartz was alone in the corridor. I asked him where Brake was.

“In his car. He got a radio call.”

I started for the ambulance entrance, and met Brake coming in.

“Norris do any talking?”

“Plenty.”

“Confess?”

“Hardly. He’s ready to make a statement.”

“When I’m ready. I got more important things right now. I’m going on a barbecue picnic in the mountains.” He smiled grimly, and called along the corridor to Schwartz: “Take Norris back to his cell. Get Pearce in the D.A.’s office, if he wants to make a statement. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”