Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“Never mind that.” Mario’s hand closed on the old man’s arm. “Did you catch the name of the boat?”

The old man pulled away. “Don’t get excited, friend. Just take it easy. The tuna boat didn’t get close enough to read the name. You lose a boat?”

“You guessed it.”

“It’s a sport-fishing boat with aluminium outriggers.”

Mario turned to me urgently: “Drive me out to Sanctuary, how about it?” The ugly bruises around his eyes were livid against his pallor.

“Don’t you think you better take it easy?”

“When my boat’s breaking up on the rocks? You don’t want to drive me, I’ll take my motorcycle.”

“I’ll drive you,” I said. “How far is it?”

“Less than ten miles. Come on.”

“Is it your boat?” The old man’s question blew after us like a seagull’s cry, and blew away unanswered.

We drove down the coast highway in silence. Mario sat glum beside me, glaring down at his skinned knuckles, which he rapped together fiercely time after time. With his bandage-helmeted head and damaged Latin features, he looked like a wounded gladiator. I hoped he wasn’t going to pass out on my hands.

“Who beat you up, Mario?” I asked him after a while.

It was some time before he answered. When he did, his voice was thick with remembered anger. “There were three of them. Two of them held me while the other one sloughed me. Who they were is my own business. I’ll take care of them personally, one at a time.”

He dug into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a dully gleaming object. I took my eyes from the road to glance at it. It was a curved metal bar of aluminum, about five inches long, with four round fingerholes and a taped grip. Mario slipped it over his fingers and smacked his armed right hand in the open palm of his left. “I’ll take care of them personally,” he growled to himself.

“Put it away,” I said. “It’s a felony to carry knuckles like that. Where did you get it?”

“Took it away from a customer one time. I used to be a bartender in town.” He kissed the cruel edge of the metal and dropped it back in his pocket. “I thought it might come in handy. I’m glad I kept it.”

“You’ll get yourself in worse trouble. Why did they beat you, Mario?”

“It was my lousy brother’s fault,” he said. “He skipped on Friday night and left me holding the bag. They thought I was in it with him. He didn’t even warn me ahead of time. They came aboard the Queen in the middle of the night and dragged me out of my bunk. I couldn’t handle three.”

“Is that the night you and Joe got back from Ensenada?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What about Ensenada? Joe and me went fishing off Catalina Thursday and Friday. We anchored off the island overnight.”

“Catch anything?”

“Not a damn thing. What’s this about Ensenada, anyway?”

“I heard that Dowser has a Mexican branch. Your loyalty to Dowser is very moving, especially after what he did to your face.”

“I don’t know any Dowser,” he answered unconvincingly. “You wouldn’t be Treasury, would you?”

“I would not. I told you I’m a private detective.”

“What’s your angle? You said you talked to Galley, you must of found her?”

“Your brother slugged me last night. It bothers me, for some reason.” But it was the dead man who lay heavy on my mind.

“I’ll lend you my knucks when I finish with them,” he said. “Turn down the next side road.”

It was a rutted lane, meandering across a high meadow to the lip of a sea-cliff. Near the cliffs edge a grove of eucalyptus, with smooth pink trunks like naked flesh, huddled raggedly in the wind. There were weathered redwood tables for picnickers scattered among the trees. Mario ran down a path toward the edge of the cliff, and I followed him. I could see the moving water through the trees, as bright as mercury, and then the gray Coast Guard cutter a half-mile out from shore. It was headed north, back to Pacific Point.

The path ended in a sagging wooden barrier beyond which the cliff dropped sheer. A hundred feet below, which looked like a hundred yards, the running surges burst on its rocky base. Mario leaned on the barrier, looking down.

Where the surf boiled whitest on the jutting black basalt, the boat lay half-capsized. Wave after wave struck it and almost submerged it, pouring in foam-streaked sheets down its slanting deck. The boat rolled with their punches, and its smashed hull groaned on the rocks. The outriggers flopped loose like broken wings. It was a total loss.

Mario’s body was swaying in sympathy with the boat. I didn’t have to ask if it was his. He groaned when the surf went over it, and his face was wetter than the spray accounted for.

“I wonder what happened to Joe,” I said.

“The bastard wrecked my boat. I hope he drowned.”

A cormorant flew over the water from north to south like a sharp black soul hell-bent. Mario watched it out of sight.

We were waiting at the yacht basin when the Coast Guard cutter docked. As the gray hull nudged the truck-tire buffers along the edge of the dock, two men jumped ashore. One was a tanned young Coast Guard lieutenant in working uniform, apparently the commander of the cutter. The other was a gray-bearded man in ancient suntans without insignia. He had the sea-scoured faded eyes, the air of quiet obstinacy and the occupational pot of an old Navy petty officer.

“The Aztec Queen ’s on the rocks at Sanctuary,” he said to Mario.

“I know it. We just got back from there.”

“No chance to salvage it,” the Coast Guard lieutenant said. “Even if we could get in close enough, it wouldn’t be worth it now. It’s breaking up.”

“I know it.”

“Let’s get inside.” The harbormaster iiugged himself. “That’s a cold wind.”

We followed him to his office on the breakwater at the foot of the dock. I sat in on a conference in the barren cubicle, or stood in on it, because there were only three chairs. They had seen nobody aboard the wreck. The skipper of the tuna boat who had reported it in the first place had seen nobody, either. The question was: how did the Aztec Queen get out of the yacht basin and nine miles down the coast?

In offical company, Mario wasn’t outspoken. He said he had no idea. But he looked at me as if he expected me to do the talking.

“Its your boat, isn’t it?” the harbormaster said.

“Sure it’s my boat. I bought it secondhand from Rassi in January.”

“Insured?” the lieutenant asked him.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t afford the premiums.”

“Tough tiddy. What were you using it for?”

“Fishing parties, off and on. Mostly off, in this season. You know that, Chief.” He turned to Schreiber, who was leaning back in his chair against the wall. The coastal-waters chart behind his head showed a round grease spot where he had leaned before.

“Let’s get back on the beam,” he said heavily. “The boat didn’t slip her moorings and steer herself onto the rocks. There must have been somebody aboard her.”

“I know that,” Mario stirred uneasily in his chair. If talking had to be done, he wanted somebody else to do it for him.

“Well, it wasn’t Captain Kidd. Didn’t the engine have a lock on it?”

“Yeah. My brother had the keys, my brother Joe.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Now we’re getting somewhere. Your boat was gone this morning when I come on duty. I thought you took it.”

“I been laid up,” Mario said. “I was in an accident.”

“Yeah, I can see. Looks as if your brother got himself in a worse accident. Did you give him permission to take the boat?”