Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“I thought you said my mother–”

“Keith persuaded her. He paid a visit to her Sunday night and talked her into hiring me.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She did. And it’s the truth.”

“She didn’t know Keith.”

“She met him Sunday.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The whole thing was a setup, when I met him in Palm Springs. He wanted me to find him there. Keith was afraid to come to me openly on his own, on account of Joe and Dowser. He felt caught in the middle between them. Still, he had guts enough to take me out there. It must have been hard to do, for a tender personality like Keith. And it really meant something.”

“Yes, it meant something.” I thought she added under her breath: “Poor fool.” She was quiet then.

We were on the open highway, headed north toward Long Beach. A strong wind was blowing across it, and I reduced my speed to keep the car from weaving. I caught occasional glimpses of the sea, white-capped and desolate under a driving sky. The unsteady wind whined in the corners of the cut-banks and fell off in unexpected silences. In one of the silences, under the drive of the motor, I heard Galley crying to herself. The lights of Long Beach angered the moving sky ahead of us. The wind rose and fell and rose, and the woman’s crying continued through strata of peace and violence. She moved against me gently and leaned her head on my shoulder. I drove left-handed so as not to disturb her.

“Did you love him, Galley?”

“I don’t know, he was sweet to me.” She sighed in the corners of her grief; her breath tickled my neck. “It was too late when I met him. I was married to Joe, and Keith was going to marry another woman. I took him away from her, but it couldn’t work out. He wasn’t quite a man, except when he was loaded. Then he was worse than a man.”

“He’s finished now.”

“Everything’s finished,” she said. “Everything’s on its last legs. I wish I had had a blowout when I was driving Joe in from Oasis. There wouldn’t be all these loose ends to gather up and live with, would there?”

“You didn’t strike me as the kind of a girl who wants an easy out.”

“There are no easy outs, I guess. I thought I was taking an easy out when I married Joe. I was sick of taking hospital orders, fighting off internes in the linen room, waiting for something good to happen to me. Joe looked like something good for a little while. He wasn’t.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I told you that, this afternoon. It seems like years ago, doesn’t it?”

“Tell me again.”

“There are things I’d rather talk about, but I will if you insist. I was on twenty-four hour duty with Mr. Speed for over two weeks. Joe came to see him nearly every day. He was running the Arena for him.”

“Who shot Speed?”

“One of Dowser’s men, Blaney I think. I didn’t dare speak out this afternoon. They might have been listening.”

“Did Speed tell you that?”

“No, he never admitted anything about the shooting. When the police questioned him in the hospital, he claimed he shot himself by accident. I suppose he was afraid they’d finish him off if he talked. It was Joe told me, after we were married. I promised him I’d never tell a soul, but I guess my promises to Joe are canceled now. He’s gone away without caring what happens to me.

“Gone where? Surely he gave you a hint.”

“I only know what I told you,” she said. “I believe he took Mario’s boat.”

“The Aztec Queen didn’t get very far.”

“Joe might have been covering his tracks. He could have had another boat waiting at sea for him.”

“His brother had the same idea.”

“Mario? Mario would know, better than I. Joe has friends in Ensenada–”

“I wonder. He may have business connections, but they really belong to Dowser. If Joe’s as sharp as he sounds, he’ll be running in the opposite direction – Did anybody meet him at the yacht basin?”

“I didn’t see anyone, no. I heard what you told Mr. Callahan about the man on the beach. It might have been Joe, mightn’t it, in spite of what the girl said?”

“It might. I think it was somebody else.”

“Who?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“What do you think happened to Joe?”

“God knows. He may be in Los Angeles or San Francisco. He may have flown to Cleveland or New York. He may be at the bottom of the sea.”

“I almost hope he is.”

“What was he carrying, Galley?”

“He didn’t tell me, but I can guess that it was heroin. It’s what he deals in.”

“Does he take it himself?”

“Not Joe. I’ve seen some of his customers, and that’s when I started to hate him. I didn’t even like his money after that.”

“He ran out with Dowser’s shipment, is that it?”

“Evidently. I didn’t dare to ask him.”

“How much?”

“I couldn’t even guess.”

“Where did he keep it?”

“I don’t know that, either.” Her body turned inward to me, and she sighed. “Please stop talking like a policeman. I really can’t stand it any longer.”

The traffic was still fairly heavy in the Long Beach area, and I concentrated on my driving. On both sides of the road, the oilfield derricks marched like platoons of iron men across the suburban wilderness. I felt as if I were passing through dream country, trying to remember the dream that went along with the landscape and not being able to. Galley removed her hat and lay heavy and still against me until I stopped the car in front of her mother’s house.

“Wake up,” I said. “You’re home.”

It was nearly two o’clock when I reached my section of the city. I lived in a five-room bungalow on a middle-class residential street between Hollywood and Los Angeles. The house and the mortgage on it were mementos of my one and only marriage. Since the divorce I never went home till sleep was overdue. It was overdue now. The last few miles down the night-humming boulevard I drove by muscle memory, half-asleep. My consciousness didn’t take over until I was in my driveway. I saw the garage door white in my headlights, a blank wall at the end of a journey from nowhere to nowhere.

Leaving the motor idling, I got out of the car to open the garage. Two men walking abreast emerged from the shadows on the porch beside me. I waited in the narrow passage between the house and the open door of the car. They were big young men, dressed in dark suits and hats. In the half-light reflected from the garage door, their wide shoulders and square faces looked almost identical. A pair of heavenly twins, I guessed, from the Los Angeles police. The thought of Dalling in his blood had followed me all day. Now Dalling was catching up.

“Archer?” one of them said. “Mr. Lew Archer?”

“You have me. Hearthstone of the Death Squad, I presume.” I was running short of elan. “Accompanied by Death-stone of the Hearth Squad. Where’s Squadstone of the Death Hearth?”

“I’m Sergeant Fern,” said First Policeman. “This is Sergeant Tolliver.”

“Pronounced Taliaferro, no doubt.”

Second Policeman said: “It’s pretty late to be making corny jokes, isn’t it, Mr. Archer?”

“Bloody late. Can’t this wait until morning?”

“Lieutenant Gary said to bring you in whenever you showed. He wants to talk to you now.”

“About the Dalling killing?”

The plain-clothes sergeants looked at each other as if I had said something significant. The first one said: “Lieutenant Gary will be glad to explain.”

“I suppose there’s no way out of it.” I switched off the headlights and slammed the car door shut. “Let’s go.”