Росс Макдональд - The Way Some People Die

“If you can figure it out, I’ll give you a job.”

“I could use one. The point is that Keith was deathly afraid of Joe. He wanted you to come out there and make trouble, the worse the better. If both of you got killed, that would be perfect. I’d be there in his house, unencumbered, complete with dowry. He wouldn’t even have to carry me across the threshold. Does it make sense? He’d be afraid to hire you personally for a job like that – too many things to go wrong.”

The waiter set a steak in front of her, and poured beer for me.

“The job is yours,” I said. “The steak is an advance on your first week’s salary.”

She paid no attention to the food, or to me. “It didn’t work out the way Keith wanted it to. Joe survived, and so did you. What did happen was, Joe thought that the gang was closing in, and he had to run for it. Maybe that’s all Keith counted on. Anyway, he was there at the dock, or on the boat, when Joe got there. And he did his own dirty work after all.”

“Very fine,” I said. “But how did he know where Joe was heading? You didn’t tell him?”

“I didn’t know. He might have followed us down here.”

“He might have. Or he might have had an accomplice.”

“Who?” Her eyes burned black.

“We’ll discuss that later. Eat your steak now, before it gets cold. I’ll be back shortly.” I slid out of my seat.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to catch the doctor before he leaves. Guard my beer, will you?”

“With my life.”

McCutcheon, assisted by the man in the striped shirt, was sewing up an incision that ran from the base of the dead man’s throat to his lower abdomen. The doctor was wearing rubber gloves, a white coverall, and a hat that gave him an oddly casual appearance. A dead cigar projected from his mouth.

It didn’t turn in my direction till the sewing job was finished. Then McCutcheon straightened, using his forearm to push the hat back on his head. “Rotten sort of task,” he said. “I shouldn’t kick, I guess. He’s fresher than some.”

“Exactly how fresh, can you tell?”

“It’s a hard question, with bodies found in water. Rate of deterioration depends on water temperature and other factors. We happen to know that this laddie’s been in the water between fifty and sixty hours. If I didn’t know that, I’d say he’d been in longer. Decomposition’s rather far advanced for this time of year.” He started to reach for a pocket under the coverall, then remembered his gloved hands: “Light my cigar for me, will you?”

I gave him a light. “What about the cause of death?”

He dragged deep, regarding me through a cloud of blue smoke. “It isn’t definite yet. I need some work from the pathology lab before I stick my neck out.” He pointed a thumb at a row of jars the undertaker was labeling on the adjacent table. “Stomach contents, blood, lung tissue, neck structures. You a reporter?”

“Detective. Private, more or less. I’ve been working on this case from the beginning. And I simply want to know if he was drowned.”

“It’s not impossible,” he said around the cigar. “Some of the indications are consistent with drowning. The lungs are waterlogged, for one thing. The right side of the heart is dilated. Trouble is, those conditions are equally consistent with asphyxia. There are chemical tests we can use on the blood to determine which it is, but I won’t have a report on them before tomorrow.”

“In your opinion, though, he was drowned or smothered?”

“I don’t have an opinion until the facts are in.”

“No signs of violence?”

“None that I can ascertain. I’ll tell you this: if he was drowned, it was an unusual drowning; he must have died as soon as he hit the water.”

The mortician glanced up brightly from his jars. “I’ve seen it happen, doctor. Sometimes they die before they strike the water. Shock. Their poor hearts just stop ticking.” He coughed delicately.

McCutcheon ignored him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of here.”

“Sorry. But would you call it murder?”

“That depends on a lot of things. Frankly, there’s something a little peculiar about the tissues. If it weren’t a patent impossibility, I’d say he might have frozen to death. Anyway, I’m making a couple of microscopic sections. So there you have three alternatives. See what you can make of them.” He turned back to the table where Tarantine lay.

I drove to the sheriffs office and found Callahan. He was huddled over a typewriter that looked too small for his hands, filling out an official form of some kind. He looked pleased when I walked in, providing him with an excuse to leave off typing.

“How was George’s?”

“Fine. I left Mrs. Tarantine there.”

“Did her brother-in-law find you all right?”

“Mario? I didn’t see him.”

“He left here a few minutes ago. He wanted to invite her for overnight – you wouldn’t think a dame with her class would want to stay with them guineas, though. Hell, I wanted to hold him in a cell but the Chief says no. We need the Italian vote in the election. Matter of fact, the Chief is one himself, shut my big mouth.”

“If the vote depends on Mario, you’ll probably lose it. I’ve just been talking to McCutcheon.”

“What did he say?”

“A lot of things. Which boil down to three possibilities: drowning, suffocation, freezing.”

“Freezing?”

“That’s what he said. He also said that it was impossible, but I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me if Mario’s boat had a freezer.”

“I doubt it. The big commercial boats have. You don’t see them on a sport boat that size. There’s an ice plant down near the dock, though. Maybe we better take a look at it.”

“Later. Right now I want to see Mario.”

I was frustrated. When we reached George’s Cafe, the booth I had occupied was empty.

The old Greek waiter hustled across the room. “I’m sorry, sir, I poured out your beer after the lady left. I thought–”

“When did she leave?”

“Five minutes, ten minutes, hard to tell. When her friend came in–”

“The man with the bandaged head?”

“That’s him. He sat down with her for a minute, then they got up and left.” He twisted his head towards Callahan. “Is something the matter, sheriff?”

“Huh. Did he threaten her? Show any kind of a weapon?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” The old man’s face had turned a dull white, like bread dough. “I see any trouble, I call you on the telephone, you know that. They just walked out like anybody else.”

“No argument?”

“Maybe they argued a little. How can I tell? I was busy.”

I drew Callahan to one side.

“Did she have her car?”

He nodded. “They’re probably in it, eh?”

“It looks to me like a general alarm, with road-blocks. The quicker the better.”

But the alarm and the road-blocks were too late. I waited in the sheriffs office for an hour, and nobody was brought in. By ten o’clock I was ready to try a long shot in the dark.

For two hours I drove down the white rushing tunnel carved by my headlights in the solid night. At the end of the run the unbuilt town lay dark around me, its corners desolate under the sparse streetlights. When I stepped out of my car the night shot up like a tree and branched wide into blossoming masses of stars. Under their far cold lights I felt weak and little. If a fruit fly lived for one day instead of two, it hardly seemed to matter. Except to another fruit fly.

There was light behind the Venetian blinds of the house that Dalling built, the kind of warm and homey light a lonely man might envy as he passed the house. The same light that murderers worked in when they killed their wives or husbands or lovers or best friends. The house was as quiet as a burial vault.