Росс Макдональд - Trouble Follows Me

Finally I heard the irregular rhythm of several pairs of feet on the stairs and in the hall. Baker came into the room with a native police sergeant in olive drab, and a man in grey civilian clothes and a panama hat. He introduced the civilian as Detective Cram.

Cram took off his hat quickly and jerkily. He was a thin middle-sized, middle-aged man with a hair-trigger smile and frown. They alternated on his face but scarcely changed his expression of cynical curiosity. His mouth was thin, wide and knowing like a shark’s. In a blue polka-dotted bow-tie and a striped silk shirt he looked a little too dapper to be quite real.

“O.K.,” he said. “There’s been an accident. Show it to me.”

Savo took him into the inner room. When he came out there was no change in his face or voice.

“You were the one that found it, eh?” He pointed an eye at me. I said yes.

“Tell me about it.” I told him about it.

“So the young lady was with you on the back porch. O.K., I won’t ask what you were doing there.”

“We were looking for Sue,” Mary said stiffly.

“Friend of yours?”

“Yes. We worked in the same place.”

“You worked at the station with her, eh? Any suggestions as to why she committed suicide?”

“I didn’t know her that well. She didn’t say anything to me.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have to say anything to you?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said.

“Who was with her?” He jerked a thumb towards the door behind him. His eyes picked out Eric. “You?”

“Yes.”

“Quarrel?”

“Yes.”

“How long had you known her?”

“A year, I guess.”

“Pretty well, eh?”

Eric’s grief had carried him beyond reticence. For the time being he was shocked into candor, almost a childish naïveté. “We were in love with each other,” he said.

“For Christ’s sake, then,” Cram said tonelessly, “why didn’t you get married? She’s no good to anybody now.”

“I am married.”

“I see. Congratulations. And the next thing you’ll ask me is can’t I hush this whole god-damn mess up for you.”

“I haven’t asked you anything,” Eric said. “But now I’ll ask you to go to hell.”

“Sure sure. Cooperation is all I get. Who’s this?” He looked at Land, who was still sitting by himself watching the rest of the room as if he expected it to close in on him suddenly without warning.

“Hector Land, sir. I’m a steward on Mr. Swann’s ship.”

“You own it, eh?” Cram said to Eric. “What’s he here for?”

“He came here to serve at the party.”

“Some woman accused him of murdering the girl,” Savo put in. “Raping her and murdering her. He didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“And I’m a cop, but I don’t know a god-damn thing. How do you know?”

“I examined both of them.” Savo glanced at Mary.

“I get it. Are those her shoes in there?”

“I could tell you,” Mary said.

“Go and get them,” Cram said to the sergeant. “They’re at the end of the couch under the window.”

They were black pumps, about size 4. Mary looked at them and said they were Sue’s.

“They were off when you found her, eh?”

“Yes,” I said. “She was in her stocking feet.”

“I guess she took them off to climb out of the window,” Cram said. “Well, I’ll see you all at the inquest.”

“When will that be?” I said.

“Tomorrow, if I can light a fire under a couple of comics downtown. Why?”

“I’m awaiting transportation to the mainland. I may get it tomorrow. Is there any chance of my signing a statement if the inquest isn’t held in time?”

“Can’t wait, eh? How the hell do I know? Everybody pushes me around. Craziest thing I ever did in my life was take off my army uniform.”

“You were in the army, eh?” I said. “Is that why you don’t like the navy?”

“I don’t like the army either. I was in the last war. You know, the easy war.”

“What you need is sleep, Inspector. Why don’t you go home and take it?”

“Can’t sleep. You’re a doctor,” he said to Savo. “What should I do if I can’t sleep?”

“Drink whiskey,” Savo said. “You wouldn’t be so nervous if you got drunk every few days.”

“I can’t get drunk, either. On the jump all the god-damn time. Anyway, at twenty-five dollars a bottle what would I be doing with whiskey on my salary?”

“Would you mind jumping somewhere and getting us curfew passes?” I said. “Or have you got one in your marsupial pouch?”

“A kangaroo, get it, sergeant?” Cram said.

“No, sir.”

“Let it pass. I can drive you out to the Navy Yard, I guess. After that you’re on your own.”

“What about Miss Thompson?”

“Live in town?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “Quite near here.”

“We’ll drop you.” He said to the sergeant, “You stay here. They’ll probably come for her soon.”

When we went downstairs there was nothing left of the party but overflowing ashtrays, empty and half-empty glasses which hung a sour smell in the air, chairs grouped here and there still in the attitudes of intimacy, emptiness and silence where there had been crowds, music and laughter. Everyone had gone home but Gene Halford, who was standing in the hall talking to the manager.

“I’m sorry to hear about this,” Halford said to me.

“We all are. Where are you spending the night?”

“I’ve been assigned to a BOQ out at the yard, but I haven’t figured out how I’m going to get there. I didn’t go on the bus because I thought I should wait for you.” Curiosity, excitement and pity mingled incongruously in his murky green eyes.

“What the hell, come with us,” Cram said viciously. “The wagon holds seven, and I’ll make everything right by joining the Drivers’ Association in the morning. My name’s Cram. Detective Cram.”

“Halford’s my name. Are you investigating this murder?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Cram, to be able to feel so casual about things.”

“I mean I don’t know whether it’s a murder,” Cram snapped. “Do you?”

“When women commit suicide they don’t usually hang themselves,” Halford said dogmatically. “Unless of course they have a reason for wanting to look ugly after they die.” His eyes in quick malice flicked toward and away from Eric’s face. “Love isn’t stronger than death, but vanity is.”

Eric was too remote to be hurt, and didn’t hear him. His pale eyes were set like stones, mesmerized by the ruined body which he had seen on the floor, blinded to everything else by grief and shame.

“Hold your tongue,” I said to Halford, “or I’ll run a ring through it.”

His laughter was quite jolly and extremely hideous.

I WOKE UP and looked at my wristwatch, which said five o’clock. For a moment I lay tense and empty, waiting for the General Quarters bell to sound. Then I realized, but without relaxing, that I was in the upper bunk in Eric’s stateroom on a ship in Pearl Harbor, where no enemy would strike again for a very long time. But I did not relax. There are things more terrible to the imagination than Kamikaze planes, and my imagination had lain prostrate among those things all night.

I noticed that a light was burning in the cabin, and rolled over to the edge of the berth and looked down. Eric was sitting in the steel chair in front of the steel desk, his feet wide apart on the steel deck. He hadn’t undressed, and his sloping back looked immobile and infinitely tired, as if he had been sitting there all night.

But his voice was quite natural when he turned at the sound of my movement. “Go back to sleep, Sam, it’s pretty early. Does this light bother you?”