Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

When I heard the door of the front office close, I turned and sauntered back. There was a pickup truck in the driveway beside the dog hospital. I went and sat on its running board in the shadow, and watched the lighted window. In no time at all the light in the room went out.

I noticed then that the boy in the T-shirt shared my interest in it. He had mounted the steps without my seeing him, and was walking very lightly toward the closed door. When he reached it, he flattened himself against the wall, tense and still like a figure in a freeze. I sat and watched him. He looked as if he were waiting for a signal to move. I heard it when it came: the girls voice calling softly behind the door. I couldn’t make out the words; perhaps the call was wordless.

The boy unlocked the door and stepped inside and closed it. The curtained window lit up again. I decided to move in closer.

There was another set of stairs at the rear of the building, where the gallery widened into an open sunporch. I stepped across a scrubby eugenia hedge and climbed the stairs; moved softly along the gallery to the lighted window, staying close to the wall where the boards were less likely to creak. I could hear the voices before I reached the window: the boy’s voice speaking with quiet intensity: “How can she be your wife? You’re registered from Oregon, and she lives here. I thought I recognized her, and now I know it.” And the man’s, strained and subdued by anxiety: “We just got married today, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”

The boy was scornful: “I bet she doesn’t even know your name.”

“I don’t,” the girl admitted. “What are you going to do?”

“You didn’t have to tell him that!” Hysteria threatened the man, but it was still controlled by the fear of being heard. “You didn’t have to bring me here in the first place. You said it was safe, that you had an understanding with the management.”

“I guess I was wrong,” the girl said wearily.

“I guess you were! now look at the mess I’m in. How old are you anyway?”

“Fifteen, nearly sixteen.”

“God.” The word came out with a rush of air, as if he’d been rammed in the stomach by a piledriver. I leaned at the edge of the window trying to see him, but the window was covered completely with curtains of rough tan cloth.

“That makes it worse,” the boy said virtuously. He sounded very virtuous for a night clerk in a waterfront motel. “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Statutory rape, even.”

The man said without inflection: “I got a daughter at home as old as her. What am I going to do? I got a wife.”

The virtuous youth said: “You’re remembering a little late. I tell you what I have to do. I have to call the police.”

“No! You don’t have to call the police. She doesn’t want you to call them, do you? Do you? I paid her money, she won’t testify. Will you?”

“They’ll make me,” she said glumly. “They’ll send me away. You, too.”

“This isn’t a call-house, mister,” the boy said. “The manager says if this sort of thing comes up, I got to call the police. I didn’t invite you here.”

“She did! It’s all her fault. I’m a stranger in town, son. I didn’t realize the situation. I came down here from Portland for the ad convention. I didn’t realize the situation.”

“Now you do. We let this sort of thing go on, they take away our license. The manager hears about it, I lose my job. And I’m not your son.”

“You don’t have to get nasty.” The older man’s voice was querulous. “Maybe what you need is a punch in the nose.”

“Try it on, you old goat. Only button yourself up first.”

The girl’s voice cut in shrilly: “Talk to him. You won’t get anywhere like that. He’ll tag you for assault along with the rest.”

“I’m sorry,” the older man said.

“You’ve got plenty to be sorry about.”

The girl began to sob mechanically. “They’ll send me away, and you too. Can’t you do anything, mister?”

“Maybe I could talk to the manager? It isn’t good business if you call the police–”

“He’s out of town,” the boy said. “Anyway, I can handle this myself.”

After a pause, the man asked haltingly: “How much money do you make a week?”

“Forty a week. Why?”

“I’ll pay you to forget this business. I haven’t got much ready cash–”

“You’ve got some twenties in your wallet,” the girl said. She had given over sobbing as suddenly as she’d started. “I saw them.”

“You shut up,” the boy said. “I couldn’t take a bribe, mister. It would mean my job.”

“I have about eighty-five in cash here. You can have it.”

The boy laughed flatly. “For contributing to statutory rape? That would be cheap now, wouldn’t it? Jobs are scarce around here.”

“I have a hundred-dollar traveler’s check.” The man’s voice was brightening. “I’ll give you a hundred and fifty. I got to keep a little to pay my hotel.”

“I’ll take it,” the boy said. “I don’t like to do it, but I’ll take it.”

“Thank God.”

“Come on down to the office, mister. You can use the fountain pen in the office.”

“Gee, thanks, mister,” the girl said softly. “You saved my life for sure.”

“Get away from me, you dirty little tart.” His voice was furious.

“Quiet,” the boy said. “Quiet. Let’s get out of here.”

I moved back to the sun-porch, and watched them around the corner as they came out. The boy moved briskly ahead, swinging his arms. The older man slouched behind with his hat in his hand. His untied shoelaces dragged on the floor of the gallery.

I tapped on the door.

“Who is it?” the girl whispered.

I tapped on the door again.

“Is that you, Ronnie?”

I answered yes. Her bare feet padded across the floor, and the door opened. “He was easy–” she started to say. Then her hand flew up to her mouth, and her eyes darkened at the sight of me. “Augh?”

She tried to shut the door in my face. I pushed through past her and leaned on the door, closing it behind me. She backed away, the fingers of both hands spread across her red-smeared mouth. She had nothing on but a skirt, and after a moment she remembered this. Her hands slid down to cover her breasts. They were young and small, easy to cover. The bones in her shoulders stood out, puny as a chicken’s. A part of her left arm was pitted like ancient marble by hypo marks.

“Yours is a keen racket, sister. Can’t you think of anything better to do with your body?”

She retreated further, as far as the unmade bed in the corner of the room. It was an ugly little room, walled and ceiled with sick green plaster that reminded me of public locker rooms, furnished with one bed, one chair, one peeling veneer dresser and a rug the moths had been at. It was a hutch for quick rabbit-matings, a cell where lonely men could beat themselves to sleep with a dark brown bottle. The girl looked too good for the room, though I knew she wasn’t.

She picked her sweater off the floor and pulled it over her head. “What business of yours is it, what I do with my body?” Her red-eyed breast looked dully at me for an instant before she covered it. “You get out of here or I’ll call the key-boy.”

“Good. I want to talk to him.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re a policeman.” There was something peculiar about her eyes.

“A private cop,” I said. “Does that make you feel any better?”

“Get out of my room and leave me alone, then I’ll feel better.”

I moved toward her instead. Her face was pinched thin and white by an internal chill. The peculiar thing about her eyes was that they had no centers. I looked through them into darkness, cold darkness inside her. A tremor started in her hands, moved up her arms to her shoulders and down her body. She sat down on the edge of the bed and gripped her knees with both hands, bracing her limbs against each other to keep them from flying apart. A shadow crossed her face as dark and final as the shadows of death. She looked like a little old woman in a gold wig.