Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“I thought I might run into you. If you don’t mind waiting a minute, I want to see Callahan.”

“Of course I’ll wait.”

She sat down on the bench. Callahan hung over her and thanked her profusely for her aid. Her smile was a little strained. The fat young man leaned across the counter, his fleshbound eyes regarding her hungrily.

The big man put on his hat as he turned to me. “What’s the story, mac? Let’s see, you were with Mario down on the waterfront. You a friend of his?”

“A private detective, looking for Joe Tarantine. The name is Archer.”

“For her?” He cocked his head towards Galley.

“Her mother.” I walked him to the other end of the counter. “A girl I’ve been talking to saw something this morning that ought to interest you. She was lying behind a wind-shelter on Mackerel Beach at dawn, all by herself.”

“All by herself?” Perplexity or amusement corrugated the skin around his eyes.

“She says all by herself. A man swam in to shore with a bundle around his neck, probably clothes because he had nothing on. She saw him cross the beach and then she heard a car start up in the grove of trees behind the barbecue pits.”

“So that’s what happened to Tarantine,” he drawled.

“It wasn’t Joe, according to her, and it wasn’t Mario either. She knows both of them–”

“Who is this girl? Where is she?”

“I met her at the wrestling match. I tried to bring her in but she ran out on me.”

“What does she look like?”

“Blonde and thin.”

“Hell, half the girls in town are blondies nowadays. When did you say she saw this guy?”

“Shortly before dawn. It was still too dark to see him very clearly.”

“She wouldn’t be having delusions?” he muttered. “Any girl that was lying on the beach by herself at that time.”

“I don’t think so.” But perhaps he had something. There were better witnesses than Ruth, a hundred and fifty million of them roughly.

He turned to Galley, removing his hat again. Even his voice changed when he spoke to her, as if he had a separate personality for each sex: “Oh, Mrs. Tarantine. What time did you say you drove your husband down here?”

She rose and came toward us, walking with precision. “I don’t know the time exactly. About four a. m., I think it was.”

“Before dawn, though?”

“At least an hour before dawn. It wasn’t fully daylight when I got back to Santa Monica.”

“That’s what I thought you told me.”

“Is it important?”

He answered her with solemnity: “Everything is important in a murder case.”

“You think he was murdered?” I said.

“Tarantine? No telling what happened to him. We’ll start dragging operations in the morning.”

“But you mentioned murder.”

“Tarantine is wanted for murder,” he said. “L. A. has an all-points out for him. Didn’t you hear about the Dalling killing?”

I glanced at Galley. Her head moved in a barely perceptible negative. I said: “Oh, that.”

“I’m horribly tired,” she said. “I’m going to ask Mr. Archer to drive me home.”

I said I’d be glad to.

She took my arm on the courthouse steps, her fingers gripping me hard but not unpleasantly. “I’m grateful you showed up, Archer. I’ve been answering policemen’s questions for hours and hours, and I feel quite unreal, like a character in a movie. You’re something solid to hold on to, aren’t you?”

“Solid enough. I weigh a hundred and eighty-five.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. All those official faces are like death masks. You have a human face, you’re made of flesh and blood.”

“Flesh and blood and all things nice,” I said. “I used to be a policeman. And I think you’re walking on eggs.”

Her grip on my arm tightened. “Walking on eggs?”

“You heard me. I can’t understand why the L. A. cops haven’t locked you up as a material witness.”

“Why should they put me in jail? I’m perfectly innocent.”

“Maybe you are in deed. Not in the mind. You’re much too smart to be taken in by Tarantine. You couldn’t live with him for over two months without knowing what he was up to.”

She dropped my arm, and hung back when I opened the door of the car for her.

“Get in, Mrs. Tarantine. You asked me to drive you home. Where’s your own car, by the way?”

“I didn’t trust myself to drive tonight. I had a terrible day, and now you’re cross-questioning me.” Her voice broke, whether artificially or naturally I couldn’t tell.

“Get in. I want to hear the story you told the cops.”

“You’ve got no right to speak to me like this. A woman can’t be forced to accuse her husband.” But she got in.

I said: “She can if she’s accessory.”

And slammed the door to punctuate the sentence.

She stayed in the far corner of the seat while I started the engine. “I didn’t even know that Joe was wanted for murder until Mr. Callahan told me. Actually there is no warrant for him. He’s simply wanted for questioning. They found his fingerprints in Keith’s apartment.” Her voice was thin.

“You must have known.” I turned left towards the main street. “As soon as they told you Dalling had been shot, you must have thought about Joe’s visit to Dalling this morning. What did you give Homicide on that?”

“Nothing. I left it out entirely. I said I drove him straight to Pacific Point.”

“And you don’t know what I mean by walking on eggs?”

“I couldn’t tell them,” she whispered. “They’d use it to put him in the gas chamber, if they ever find him.”

I stopped for a flashing red light, and crossed the main street in the direction of the highway. “This afternoon you were strongly anti-Tarantine. What transformed you into the loyal wife?”

“You can save your sarcasm, Archer.” Her spirit was flickering up again. “Joe isn’t a very nice person, but he’s incapable of killing anyone. Besides, I’m married to him.”

“I know it. It didn’t make him incapable of peddling heroin.”

“How did you find that out?”

“The hard way. The point is that I didn’t find out from you.”

“I only knew the last few weeks. I hated it. I’d have left him if I hadn’t been afraid to. Does that make me a criminal?”

“Afraid of what, Galley? Joe wouldn’t hurt a fly, the way you tell it.”

“He didn’t kill Keith,” she cried. “I’m certain he didn’t. He had no reason to.”

“Come off it, you know he had. You won’t admit it, because you’re afraid of getting involved yourself. As if you weren’t up to your neck already.”

“What reason did he have?”

“You gave me one reason this afternoon: Joe was blind mad, you said, because Dalling brought me to the hideout in Oasis. You’ve changed your story, now that the thing’s come real.”

“Keith wasn’t in his apartment. There was no shot. I would have heard the shot.”

“Nobody else heard it, either, but there was one. You want more motives? Joe must have known that you and Dalling were having an affair. Everybody else did.”

“You’re a liar!”

“About what, the fact, or the public knowledge of it?”

“It isn’t a fact. Keith was a friend, and that’s all. What do you think I am?”

“A woman who hated her husband. Call the thing platonic if you want to. Joe isn’t the kind to split hairs. You won’t deny that Dalling was crazy about you.”

“Certainly I deny it. I gave him no encouragement.”

“He didn’t need encouragement. He was a romantic kid. He would have died for you, and perhaps he did. He brought me into the case, you know.”