Росс Макдональд - Trouble Follows Me

“I just got here. I came as soon as I could.”

“Did Rodney send you? Tell me, what happened to Rodney?”

“He didn’t exactly send me. He wrote you a letter just before he died. I thought it might have some bearing on his death. I came to you to find out.”

“I haven’t had a letter from him for weeks. Not since he wrote me from Europe that he was coming home for reassignment. How did he die? Was he wounded?”

“Were you and he very close?”

“We were good friends. I’ve known him off and on for years. We went to school together in Kansas City. You needn’t pull any punches, if that’s what you mean.”

I told her briefly what had happened to Rodney Hatcher, not omitting my suspicions of Anderson and Gordon.

A few tears made shining tracks down her face, combining at the point of her chin to form a clinging drop of brine. She sat down on the edge of a chair and half turned away from me to use a handkerchief. “Poor Rodney,” she said in a deep soft voice. “It was a beastly way to die.”

“It was painless. You just go out like a light. I know from experience.”

“It was beastly for him.” She looked at me with fire and ice in her eyes. Her body was proud. I thought that Hatcher was lucky to have such a mourner. “He should have died in action. He should have died fighting.”

“Who broke into your house today?” I said after a pause. “There may be a connection between that and Rodney’s death.”

“Do you think so? Do you think perhaps he was looking for Rodney’s letter?”

“It seems very likely to me. Did you see what he looked like?”

“I didn’t see him very well. I’ll tell you what happened. This afternoon I ran over to Eva Raine’s for an hour or so – she’s a friend of mine who lives down the street.”

“Had your afternoon mail come yet?”

“No, it came when I was gone. I started home about three. When I was about half a block from home I saw this man come down off my verandah. I didn’t know then that he’d been in the house. I thought it was someone who had come to see me or father, so naturally I called to him and waved. He took one look at me over his shoulder and headed in the other direction, walking as fast as he could go.

“When I got home I found that the lock on my front door had been forced. The writing-desk had been ransacked and the bureaus and cupboards had been searched. I called the police and they said they’d hunt for him, but I haven’t heard from them since. As a matter of fact, nothing was missing. I left my purse in the house in plain sight, and nothing in it was taken.”

“You say your afternoon mail was there when you got home?”

“It was on the floor, right there.” She pointed to the front door, which opened directly on the living-room where we were sitting. I turned my head and noticed that the door had a letter-slot in it. I also noticed that she had left it ajar.

“From the fact that he searched the house it looks as if Rodney’s letter didn’t come in that mail,” I said. “It should be here tomorrow morning. It was mailed two days ago.”

“If that man comes back I’ll shoot him.” Her full defiant lips pushed out, and her wide eyes became tigerish.

“I believe you will. Did you get any idea at all of what he looked like?”

“He was tall. He looked quite broad. The very first moment I thought it was father, but then I realized that father couldn’t have gotten back from Phoenix so soon.”

“Did he have black hair?”

“I’m not sure–” In the midst of her sentence she suddenly became quite still. Even her mouth was immobilized half open.

“It wasn’t I, Mr. Drake, if that’s what you’re implying,” a man’s voice said from the direction of the door. I turned to see Gordon step quietly into the room with a contemptuously calm look in his black eyes.

I got up without haste and walked towards him. When I was near enough I dropped my right hand to the level of my knee and brought it up in an uppercut to the point of his long jaw. It was a sucker-punch, but he carried a gun. He went down with his back against the door, which slammed shut. Almost before he hit the floor there was a gun in his hand and I was looking into its round empty eye. The gun’s eye followed me as he rose to his feet.

“That was hardly a fair blow,” he said. His eyes were no longer calm. They were shining with malice. “I warned you to avoid violence, Mr. Drake.”

“I’ll show you a fair blow if you’ll lower that gun. Maybe I will anyway.”

“This gun is attuned to your aura, Mr. Drake. If you approach it it will go off.”

There was a slight click behind me and Laura Eaton said: “I have you covered. Drop that gun.”

Gordon’s eyes did not move from me but his whole body tightened.

“I’ll count to three before I shoot,” she said. “One.”

He turned the gun in his hand and handed it to me. “This is a ridiculous situation,” he said.

“Not as ridiculous as it’s going to be,” I said. “Miss Eaton, will you call the police.”

“You needn’t bother,” Gordon said. “I am the police.”

“You change identities with breath-taking rapidity. Go ahead, Miss Eaton. I’ve got him covered now.”

Gordon reached for his hip pocket.

“Keep your hands in sight,” I said sharply. “Put them on your head.”

“Very well, if that appeals to your boyish sense of fun.” He raised his hands, grinning at me sardonically. “Take my wallet out of my left hip pocket. You’ll find my identity card in it.”

I circled around him with his body at the hub of my line of fire and secured his wallet. It contained a card which identified him as Chester Gordon, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I felt cheated, doubtful and angry. My melodrama had descended into farce, and all the wasted adrenalin turned sour in my veins.

“I’m sorry to have spoiled your game of cowboys and Indians,” Gordon said acidly. “Now put down that gun, or it may get you into trouble.”

“You could have stolen this FBI card,” I said uncertainly.

“Put down that gun,” he said with authority. “Hefler wouldn’t like it if you shot me by accident.”

I remembered the smooth-talking red-haired man in the FBI office on Lafayette Street. “Are you working for Hefler?”

“I could arrest you for assaulting me, Mr. Drake. You’ve acted like a damn fool.”

I lowered the gun. He took his hands from his head and stroked his bruised jaw.

“I’m not in a mood for apologizing,” I said bitterly. “If you had taken me into your confidence–”

“We don’t take the general public into our confidence when we’re working on a case.”

“God damn it, there wouldn’t be any case if it weren’t for me!”

“I’d be just as happy,” Laura Eaton said, “if you men wouldn’t stage another brawl in my living-room. We’re all three on the same side, aren’t we?”

Gordon said, “Excuse me.”

Further recriminations rose from my wounded feelings to my lips: If you had cooperated with me we might have been able to save Hatcher, we might have been able to trap Anderson. But I swallowed them and held my tongue. I could see his point. An investigator of murder and espionage had to work in secrecy, especially in the cramped intimacy of a train.

I said, “Excuse me,” to Laura Eaton. To Gordon: “What were you doing on the train? You weren’t checking up on me, by any chance?”

“I was there partly to protect you. Two deaths had coincided with your presence. It looked as if the trouble was following you. After Hatcher died I was certain of it.”

I couldn’t resist saying: “Your protection didn’t do me much good. Nor Hatcher.”