Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“I used to be,” I said, “but I won’t spoil your chance.”

She was looking much better, now that she’d made up her mind to travel that night. There was some blood moving under her skin, some meaning in her eyes. But she still looked old enough to be her own mother.

The door sprang open without warning, as doors were always opening in my life. The boy Ronnie came in. A big nineteen or twenty, he had the face of a juvenile lead instead of a juvenile delinquent, keen and dark with a black brush of hair, a heavy single eyebrow barring his brow. His arms below the T-shirt were tanned and heavy-looking. The right one held a tire-iron.

I saw this in the instant before he swung at my head. I ducked and moved in on him before he could swing again. The girl was silent behind me. My fingers found the wrist that held the tire-iron. I twisted it away with my other hand and tossed it clanking in a corner of the room. Then I pushed him away, looped an obvious left at his head, to bring up his guard, and put my weight behind a straight right to his center. It was a sucker punch, not on the side of the angels. A single futile blow for the damned.

He fell turning on his face, and writhed on the floor for air. The girl joined him there, kneeling across him with little cries of love. He’d started her on heroin, given her yellow fever and white death, so she was crazy about him.

His paralyzed diaphragm began to work again. He drew deep sighing breaths. I stood and watched him sit up, and thought I should have hit him harder.

The girl’s white face slanted up towards me. “You big bully.”

“You wait outside, Ruth. I want to talk to Ronnie.”

“Who are you?” The boy’s words came hard between gulps of air. “What goes on?”

“He says he’s a private cop.” Her arms were around his shoulders; one of her hands was gently stroking his flank.

He pushed her away and rose unsteadily. “What do you think you want?” His voice was higher than it had been, as if my blow had reversed his adolescence.

“Sit down.” I glanced at the single chair standing under the ceiling light. “I want some information.”

“Not from me you don’t.” But he sat down. A nerve was twitching in his cheek, so that he seemed to be winking at me gaily again and again. ”

“Close the door,” I said to the girl. “Behind you.”

“I’m staying. I’m not going to let you hurt him any more.”

The boy’s face screwed up in sudden fury. “Get out of here, God damn you. Sell yourself for dog meat, only get out.” He was talking to the girl, taking out his humiliation on her.

She answered him soberly: “If you say so, Ronnie,” and went out, dragging her feet.

“You were a runner for Speed,” I said to the boy.

Fury took hold of his face again and pulled it sharp and ratty. His ears were unnaturally small and close to his head. “Ruth’s been flapping at the mouth, eh? She’s a real fun person, Ruth is. I’ll have to talk to Ruth.”

“You’ll lay off her entirely. I’ve got some more punches that you haven’t seen. No girl would look twice at your face again.”

His light eyes flicked towards the tire-iron in the corner, and quickly away from it. He groped for a boyish and dutiful expression and presented it to me. “I can’t stay here, mister, honest. I got to get out in the office.”

“There won’t be any more easy marks tonight.”

He managed to show me crooked teeth in a crooked little smile. “I guess maybe I’m stupid, mister. I don’t get you at all.”

“A century and a half is a lot of money to earn for five minute’s fast talking.”

The cheek twitched, and he winked again. He was the least charming boy I had ever talked to. “You’d never get him to testify,” he said.

“Don’t kid yourself. He’ll wake up mad tomorrow morning. I can easily find him.”

“The old goat was asking for it, wasn’t he?”

“You’re the one that’s asking for it, boy. They don’t like badger games in a tourist town.”

“I get it. You want a split.” He smiled and winked again.

“I wouldn’t touch it. Information is what I want.”

“What kind of information? I got no information.”

“About Herman Speed. I want to know what happened to him, and why.”

Without moving his body, he gave the impression of squirming. He ran his hand nervously over his dark brush of hair. “You a State agent, mister? Federal?”

“Relax. It’s not you I want. Though I’ll turn you in for extortion if I have to.”

“If I don’t talk, you mean?”

“I’m getting impatient.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I–”

“You worked for Speed. You don’t any more. Why not?”

“Speed isn’t in business any more.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Myself. Tarantine doesn’t like me.”

“I can’t understand that,” I said. “You’ve got looks, brains, integrity, everything. What more could Tarantine ask?”

That nicked his vanity and he showed a little shame. Only a little. “I was a runner for Speed, so Tarantine doesn’t like me.”

“He worked for Speed himself.”

“Yeah, but he double-crossed him. When the corporation moved in, he changed sides. He saw an independent like Speed couldn’t hold out against them.”

“So he shot Speed and took over the business for the corporation.”

“Not exactly. Tarantine’s too smart to do any shooting himself. Maybe he fingered Speed. I heard he did.”

“How did it happen?”

“I wasn’t there, I only know what I heard.” He did some more of his motionless squirming. Under the single eyebrow his eyes looked very small and close together. Transparent pimples of sweat dotted his forehead. “I shouldn’t be talking like this, mister. It could get me blasted. How do I know I can trust you?”

“You’ll have to take the chance.”

“You couldn’t use me for witness, I only know what I heard.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll tell you the best I can, mister. Speed was driving up from Tijuana that night. He had some packages of white in his tires; his system was pockets vulcanized on the inside of the tubes. Tarantine was riding with him and I guess he tipped off the mob. They hijacked Speed on the highway this side of Delmar, blocked him off the road with an old truck or something. Speed objected so they shot him down, drove his car away and left him for dead. Tarantine brought him in, he was Speed’s palsy-walsy. That’s what Speed thought. When Speed got out of the hospital, he left town. He almost died, I guess that scared him off. He couldn’t stand a shooting war, he was a gentleman.”

“I can see that. Where’s the gentleman now?”

“I wouldn’t know. He blew, that’s all. He sold the Arena lease to Tarantine and blew.”

“Describe the gentleman, Ronnie.”

“Speed? He’s a sharp dresser. Two-hundred-dollar suits and custom shirts and ties with his own monogram. A big stout guy, but sharp. He talks like a college graduate, the genuine class.”

“Does he have a face?”

“Yeah, he’s pretty good-looking for an older guy. He’s still got most of his hair – light brown hair. A little fair mustache.” He drew a finger across his upper lip. “Pretty good features, except for his nose. He has a bump on his nose where he had it broken.”

“About how old?”

“Middle-aged, forty or so. About your age, maybe a little older. Speed hasn’t got your looks, though, mister.” He tried to look earnest and appealing.

He was the kind of puppy who would lick any hand that he was afraid to bite. It was depressing not to be able to hit him again because he was younger and softer and too easy. If I really hurt him, he’d pass it on to somebody weaker, like Ruth. There was really nothing to be done about Ronnie, at least that I could do. He would go on turning a dollar in one way or another until he ended up in Folsom or a mortuary or a house with a swimming pool on top of a hill. There were thousands like him in my ten-thousand-square-mile beat: boys who had lost their futures, their parents and themselves in the shallow jerry-built streets of the coastal cities; boys with hot-rod bowels, comic-book imaginations, daring that grew up too late for one war, too early for another.