Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

She stammered: “I won’t tell you.”

Colton regarded her with cold blue interest. “What’s the girl been taking?”

“Heroin.”

“It’s a lie,” she said woodenly.

Colton shrugged his shoulders. “You’re in the wrong department, aren’t you? I’m busy. Why bring her to me?”

“Busy on the Dalling case?”

“You’ve got nerve, Lew, even to bring up the name. Lucky for you the Tarantine woman backed up your story about the gun. The Assistant D. A. wanted to clap you in one of the nice new cells till I talked him out of it. Stick around and waste my time and I’ll talk him right back into it. And it won’t be hard to do. We’ve had a lot of trouble with private operators the last couple of years.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like when I took Dwight Troy for you.”

“Don’t brag. I know you’re hot. Now why don’t you take all that Fahrenheit and peddle it someplace else? You can’t polish apples with us by bringing in a little old junkie. They’re two for a nickel. I could round up fifty any time between here and Union Station.” Colton was angry. He had kept me out of a cell, but he hadn’t forgiven me for what I had done to the law.

The girl looked at me sideways, smiling slightly. It gave her pleasure to see me taking it. She sat down in a straight-backed chair against the wall and crossed her legs.

“Go ahead and ride me,” I said. “It’s the old Army play, when somebody’s riding you.”

“Nobody’s riding me. I’ll tell you frankly, though, this Hammond woman has been ugly to deal with. And all day yesterday she was after us to release the body to her. Why in God’s name did you have to go and stir up Jane Starr Hammond?”

“It seemed like a promising lead at the time. I’m not infallible.”

“Don’t act as if you thought you were, then. Next time the wolves can have you.” He rose and moved to the window, his back to the room.

“All right,” I said. “I apologize. Now if your wounded feelings have had enough of a therapeutic workout, let’s get back to business.”

He growled something unintelligible.

“You haven’t found Tarantine, have you?”

That brought him back from the window. “We have not.” He added with heavy irony: “No doubt he gave you his forwarding address.”

“I think I know where to look for him. In the sea.”

“You’re a little late. The Sheriffs Aero Squadron in Pacific Point has been working on that for two days. The Coast Guard’s carrying on dragging operations.”

“Any trace of his companion?”

“None. They’re not even sure he had a companion. The only witness they have won’t swear there were two in the skiff. It was just an impression he had.”

“Ruth is a witness. She saw him swim ashore.”

“I heard something about that.” He turned on the girl: “Where have you been?”

“Around.” She drew herself together, shrinking in his shadow.

“What about this man you saw?”

She told her story, haltingly.

He considered it. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? You junkies have funny dreams, I hear.”

“I’m no junkie.” Her voice was strained thin by fright. “I saw the man come out of the water, just like I said.”

“Was it Tarantine? Do you know Tarantine?”

“It wasn’t Joe. The man on the beach was bigger than Joe. He had a smooth shape.” She giggled unexpectedly.

Colton looked at me: “She know Tarantine?”

“He sold her heroin.”

The giggle ceased. “It’s a lie.”

“Show her a picture of Dalling,” I said. “It’s what I brought her here for.”

He leaned across his desk and took some blown-up photographs out of a drawer. I looked at them over his shoulder as he shuffled them. Dalling lying full-length in his blood, his face like plaster in the magnesium light. Dalling close up and full face. Dalling right profile, with the black leaking hole in the side of his neck. Dalling left profile, looking as handsome as ever, and very dead.

One at a time, he handed them to the girl. She gasped when she saw the first one. “I think it’s him.” And when she had looked at them all: “It’s him all right. He was a neat-looking fellow. What happened to him?”

Colton scowled down at her. He hated questions that he couldn’t answer. After a pause he said more or less to himself: “We’ve practically assumed that Tarantine killed Dalling. If it was the other way around, wouldn’t that be a boff?” He gave no sign of laughing, though.

“If Dalling killed Tarantine, who killed Dalling?” I said.

He looked at me quizzically. “Maybe you shot him yourself, after all.”

Though Colton didn’t mean it seriously, the warmed-over accusation irritated me. “If you can take time off from making funny remarks, I want you to do something for me.” I emphasized the ‘ me .’

“Well?”

“Call up the head of the Narcotics Bureau and ask him nicely to come over here.”

The girl looked up at me sharply, her mouth working. I was threatening her food and drink and sleep, threatening to sink her island in the sea.

“For her?” Colton snorted. “Maybe you need a rest, Lew. I’ll get a matron for her.”

The girl had shrunk up small again, her thin shoulders curved forward like folded wings to nullify her chest. Matron was another word she feared. Her mouth worked miserably, but no words came. She gazed dully toward the open casement window as if she might be contemplating a running jump. I moved between her and the window. We were several floors from the street.

“Yeah, send for a matron. Ruth doesn’t want to take a cure, but she needs it.”

Colton lifted the receiver of his phone. The girl collapsed on herself, her head bent forward into her lap. The back of her neck was white and thin, feathered with a light soft fuzz of hair.

When Colton had given his order and hung up, I said: “Now call Narcotics.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of heroin in my car. Maybe you want me to peddle that elsewhere along with my Fahrenheit, you lousy phrasemonger.”

For the first time in my experience, Colton blushed. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

It was late afternoon when I drove up the hill to Dowser’s house for the third and last time. The guard at the gate had changed, but it was the same shotgun, its double muzzle watching me like a pair of binoculars. After the usual palaver and frisking, I was admitted to the sacred portals. My gun was locked in the glove compartment of the car, along with the can of heroin and Speed’s automatic and Mosquito’s knife.

Sullivan, the curly-headed Irishman, met me at the door. His face was sunburned fiery red.

“Have a nice time in Mexico?” I asked him.

“Rotten. I can’t eat their rotten food.” He looked at me sullenly, as if he could smell policeman on my clothes. “What do you want?”

“The boss. I phoned him, he knows I’m coming.”

“He didn’t say nothing to me.” Sullivan was jealous.

“Maybe he doesn’t trust you.”

He gazed at me blankly, his slow brain taken by the plausibility of my suggestion.

“Let’s get in to the boss,” I said. “He’s very eager to see me. I think he wants to offer me your job.”

Dowser and his blonde were playing two-handed canasta in the patio. They were in the middle of a hand when I stepped out through the French doors, and Dowser was losing. The woman had half a dozen melds on the table; Dowser had nothing down. He was so intent on the cards in his hand that he didn’t look up.

She did, though. “Why, hello, there,” she said to me. She was looking very pleased with herself in a strapless white bathing suit that justified her pleasure.