Росс Макдональд - Trouble Follows Me

The operator answered and I asked for the appropriate extension.

Mary’s teeth closed lightly on the back of my neck. “Don’t argue or I’ll really bite. You know you don’t love me as much as I love you.”

The Officer of the Deck on the destroyer answered, and I asked for Lieutenant Swann.

“I’m not sure whether he’s aboard. Wait a minute, please.”

I turned to kiss Mary and her lips clung, parting over mine. The world narrowed to a small burning circle.

The receiver, which had dropped on the bed, said in a cracked remote voice: “Lieutenant Swann speaking.”

I swam up out of warm forgetful depths and talked back to him. “This is Sam. How about asking me out for dinner.”

“Sure. How are you? I thought you were still in Detroit.”

“Just got in today. Can I bring Mary aboard?”

“I’m sorry, Sam. No civilians allowed on the Repair Base. Do you still want to come?”

“Yes. We’ve got things to talk about. Hector Land hasn’t been picked up yet, has he?”

“No, he’s dropped clean out of sight. We eat at seven in port. Call the ship from the main gate and I’ll send a jeep for you.”

“Right.” I set the receiver down.

I stood up and said to Mary: “Well, here I go again.”

“Damn it. You were going to have dinner with me.” Her voice was quietly furious.

“I’m awfully sorry. I’ll get back as soon as I can. I should be able to make it between nine and ten o’clock.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, I suppose. Though you deserve to be stood up.”

I took a taxi out to the Repair Base. When it dropped me at the gate I saw Chester Gordon standing in the roadway by the guards’ kiosk talking to the Marine guard.

When I approached the guard looked at my I.D. card, saluted with characteristic Marine elegance and fervor, and moved away.

“What’s the word?” I said to Gordon.

He smiled less grimly than he had smiled before. “The pieces are falling into place. Your hunch was good, Drake. A number of the records in the radio station’s record library were marked as you thought they might be. It’s evident that those records were deliberately prepared for the purpose of sending out coded intelligence. I didn’t get the details, but they’ll send an amplifying report when they’ve made a more complete investigation. What do you know about this Sue Sholto?”

“Not very much. She was reticent. Even her best friend didn’t know much about her. Lieutenant Swann can tell you more than I can. He’d known her for a long time.”

“I was just talking to Swann on the phone. He promised to send over a jeep for me, but there seems to be a holdup.”

“I’ll ride with you if I may. I’m going aboard for dinner.”

“I don’t think I’ve eaten for twenty-four hours or more. Things have been popping so fast. We got a teletype from Chicago – I sent them Anderson’s description because that’s where he got on the train. A man approximating his description, Lorenz Jensen by name, was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Chicago in 1934. He served two years and four months of a five year sentence in Joliet.”

“Did he escape?”

“No, he was released on parole. But he violated his parole and disappeared. Presumably he left the country.”

“Anderson was in China in 1936. That tallies.”

“It’s pretty uncertain. You can never go by description alone, especially after a lapse of ten years. But fingerprints are another matter, and I’ve requested Chicago to send me photostats of Jensen’s prints by airmail. Jensen’s and Anderson’s prints are in the same classification, we know that much.”

“Did Anderson leave his prints in Laura Eaton’s house?”

“No, he must have worn gloves. We got them out of his luggage in the baggage room of the Los Angeles station. He left a beautiful set of the thumb and first three fingers of the right hand on a bottle of shaving lotion. That’s the only revealing thing he did leave in his luggage.”

“When you boys move,” I said, “you move fast and in all directions.”

“We’ve got the organization, and that’s something amateurs don’t have. I don’t mean that your help hasn’t been extremely useful. We’ve depended more on lay assistance in this war than we’ve ever admitted in the papers.”

“The word amateur carries no sting for me,” I said. “This looks like our transportation now.”

We rode in a jeep to the dock where the destroyer was berthed. Eric met us at the gangway, and I introduced him to Gordon:

“I think Mr. Gordon would appreciate an invitation to dinner. Though he seldom eats or sleeps.”

“I should warn you about pot-luck,” Eric said. “It’s always pot-luck on this can.”

“I’ve never been aboard a warship before,” Gordon said. “It’ll be very romantic to eat salt pork and hardtack, and drink a noggin of brackish water.”

We had a steak dinner which Gordon and I punished severely, then retired to the privacy of Eric’s stateroom. Gordon outlined the development of the case and concluded:

“I hope you won’t think we’re jumping to conclusions, because we’re not. But it’s in the cards for me to ask you what you know about Sue Sholto. Naturally a thorough investigation is being made in Honolulu. In the meantime it’s up to me to find out what I can at this end. Anderson is at this end, and Hector Land is, or was. Can you tell me anything that might link Sue Sholto with Hector Land, or with a man that might be Anderson, or with the apparently subversive activities of those two?”

I had been watching Eric’s face while he listened to Gordon’s careful lecture. The last month had changed him. When I met him in Honolulu on the day of the party, it had seemed to me that he was suspended between acceptance and rejection of the world. His eyes had been turned outward, but uncertainly. His face had begun to set in the closed, bound look of a neurotic egotism. But the process had seemed then to be susceptible of interruption. Now the process was complete.

His smiles were no longer spontaneous, his looks were not naïve. The center of his being had retired into a secret labyrinth where it sat like a spider, clutching its means with avarice and regarding its ends with narrow passion. In a word, grief and shock are not always ennobling. Eric thought of the death of Sue Sholto chiefly as a possible obstacle in his naval and postnaval career and a thorn in his comfort.

“I didn’t know her very well,” he said. “She was just a girl I dated a few times. Naturally if I had any reason to suspect her of illegal activities I’d have reported her. Certainly I’d have had nothing more to do with her.”

“There was no sign of a relationship between her and Hector Land?”

“Certainly not. And so far as I know she wasn’t acquainted with anyone who might have been Anderson.”

“Isn’t it true that she was politically suspect?” I said. “Mary described her as a fellow-traveller.”

“I wouldn’t know. We never discussed politics.”

Gordon put in: “Did she show curiosity about naval affairs?”

“The normal feminine curiosity, I suppose. She didn’t ever try to pump me that I can remember.”

“How long did you know the girl?”

“A few months. But I was at sea most of the time, and only dated her a few times when I was in port. She had other friends. I don’t see why I should be singled out merely because I was with her on the night she killed herself.” His voice was bitter.

“You aren’t being singled out, Lieutenant Swann. You simply happen to be available for questioning. Did you know any of her other friends?”

“No, I never met any of them. She just mentioned them occasionally. I don’t remember any names. And I very much hope that you’ll keep my name out of this when it breaks in the papers. I have a wife in Michigan and if–”