Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“It’s a terrible world.”

“There are terrible people in it, anyway. Do you know Bruce Campion?”

“I wouldn’t say I know him. Ralph took me out to their place once, when Dolly was living with him. She was crazy about him at that time. She followed him around like a little poodle.”

“How did Campion treat her?”

“All right. Actually he didn’t pay too much attention to her. I think he kept her around because he needed a model. He wanted me to model for him, too. I told him I hadn’t sunk that low yet, to pose for dirty pictures.”

“He painted dirty pictures?”

“It sounded like it to me. Dolly said he made her take her clothes off.” Her nostrils flared with righteous indignation. “I only know one good reason a girl should uncover herself in front of a man.”

“Why did Campion marry her if all he wanted was a model?”

“Oh, he wanted more. They always do. Anyway, he had to marry her. He got her pregnant.”

“Did Dolly tell you this?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. I could see it already when Ralph and I were out there.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“It was along toward the end of last summer, late August or early September. They weren’t married yet, but they were talking about it, at least she was. Ralph brought along a bottle, and we drank a toast to their happiness. It didn’t do much good, did it? She’s dead, and he’s on the run.” She touched my shoulder. “Did he really kill her?”

“All the evidence seems to point to him.”

“Ralph said that isn’t so. He said there was other evidence, but the cops held back on it. He may have been telling the truth, or having one of his movie spells. You never can tell about Ralph, ’specially where one of his friends is concerned.” She drew a deep breath.

“When did Ralph say these things to you?”

Using her hand on my shoulder as a pivot, she sat down beside me. “The last night he was here. We sat up talking, after I got in.”

“Did he tell you what the other evidence was?”

“No. He kept his lips buttoned. The man of mystery.”

“Did he show you anything?”

“No.”

“What did he have with him when he left here?”

“Just the clothes that he stood up in. When he came up here he wasn’t planning to stay, but then he got this job.” She hesitated. “I almost forgot the bundle. He dropped this bundle off with me a day or two before his job folded. I wasn’t supposed to open it, he said. I felt it, though. It felt like it had clothes in it.”

“What kind of clothes?”

“I wouldn’t know. It was a great big bundle.” She opened her arms. “I tried to ask Ralph about it, but he wasn’t talking.”

“Was it stolen goods, do you think?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. Ralph’s no thief.”

“What sort of a man is he?”

“I thought you knew him.”

“Not as well as you do.”

She answered after a little thought: “I like Ralph. I don’t want to criticize him. He has a lot of good ideas. The trouble is, he never follows through on them. He keeps changing, because he can’t make up his mind what he wants to be. I can remember, when we were kids, Ralph was always talking about how he was going to be a big criminal lawyer. But then he never even made it through high school. It’s been like that all his life.”

“How long has he known Campion?”

“It goes ’way back,” she said. “Ten years or more. I think they were Army buddies in Korea. They did some talking about Korea the day Ralph took me out to the cabin.”

“I’m interested in that cabin. Do you think you could find it again?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

She looked at the leatherette-covered traveling clock on the dressing table. “I have a date. He’s due here any time.”

“Stand him up.”

“I got rent to pay, mister. Anyway, you won’t find Bruce Campion there. He only had the cabin for a while last summer. Somebody lent him the use of it.”

“I still want to see it.”

“Tomorrow. Buy me brunch tomorrow, and I’ll show you where it is. It’s real wild on that side of the lake. Buy some sandwiches and we’ll have a picnic.”

“I like night picnics.”

“But I have a date.”

“How much do you expect to make out of him?”

She frowned. “I don’t think of it that way. They give me money to gamble, that’s their business. Nobody says I have to throw it all away.”

“I’m asking you how much a couple of hours of your time is worth.”

She blinked her innocent eyes. “Twenty?” she said. “And dinner?”

We set out in the rented Ford, along a road which branched north off the highway through thickening timber. Above the broken dark lines of the trees there were almost as many stars as I had seen in Mexico. The night was turning colder, and the girl moved over against me.

“Turn on the heater, will you, mister? I don’t even know your name.”

“Lew Archer.” I switched on the blower.

“That’s a nice name. Is it your real one?”

“Naturally not. My real name is Natty Bumppo.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s a free country.”

“Is there any such person as Natty What’shisname?”

“Bumppo. He’s a character in a book. He was a great rifleman and a great tracker.”

“Are you?”

“I can shoot a rifle but as for tracking, I do my best work in cities.”

“Tracking men?”

“Tracking men.”

She huddled closer. “Do you have a gun?”

“Several, but not with me. I wish I had.”

“Do you think that Campion is hiding out in the cabin?”

“He may be, and he may be dangerous.”

She giggled nervously. “You’re trying to scare me. I thought he was kind of a sissy, with that little beret he wears, and all his arty talk.”

“He’s no sissy. He’s something more complicated than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s time I told you, Fawn. Dolly isn’t the only one who was killed. Ralph Simpson was icepicked last May, soon after you saw him last. Campion is the prime suspect.”

She had drawn in her breath sharply, and now she was holding it. I could feel her body tighten against my flank. Her breath came out in gusts around her words.

“You must be mistaken. Maybe Bruce Campion did kill Dolly – you never can tell what a man will do to his wife. But he would never do anything like that to Ralph. Ralph idolized him, he thought he was the greatest.”

“How did Campion feel about Ralph?”

“He liked him. They got along fine. Ralph was proud to have a real artist for a friend. It was one of the things he wanted to be himself.”

“I’ve known a few artists. They can make difficult friends.”

“But they don’t stick icepicks in people.” For the first time, the full meaning of what I had said struck the girl. I could feel it pass through her body, a shuddering aftershock. “Is Ralph really dead?”

“I saw him in the morgue. I’m sorry, Fawn.”

“Poor Ralph. Now he’ll never make it.”

We rode in silence for a time. She began to cry, almost inaudibly. At one point she said to the moving darkness: “All my friends are dying off. I feel like an old woman.”

I had starred glimpses of the lake between the trees, like polished steel catching the droppings of infinity.

I said when her grief had subsided: “Tell me more about Dolly.”

“What’s to tell?” Her voice was hoarse. “She came up here last spring to get a job. She made change at one of the clubs for a while, but her subtraction wasn’t too hot, so she got herself a man. It’s the same old story.”

“This time the ending was different. Did you know her well?”