Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“Then when are they going to let me out? I’ve got work to go on with.”

“You’ve got some talking to do first. If you’d leveled with the cops, you wouldn’t be here–”

“Don’t snow me. I know cops. They make patsies out of the little ones and let the big ones go.”

“You made a patsy out of yourself. Think about it.”

I left him standing and moved around the bright barred room. Campion’s eyes followed me warily. After a while he sat down at a metal table, resting his bandaged head on one hand.

I approached him and touched his shoulder. “Listen, Bruce–”

He raised both arms to protect his head.

“Relax. I’m not your enemy.”

He twisted under my hand. “Then don’t stand over me. I’ve always hated people standing over me.”

I sat down across the table from him. “I assume you’re a serious man in spite of the cop-hater nonsense. You’ve been through some rough experiences, and I respect that. You could have spared yourself some of the roughness by trusting other people.”

“Who was there to trust?”

“Me, for one. Royal can be trusted, too. He’s not a bad cop. Why didn’t you tell us the truth the night before last? You let us believe that Harriet was dead and you had drowned her.”

“You would have gone on believing it no matter what I said.”

“But you didn’t give us a chance. You didn’t give her a chance, either. You might have saved her life.”

His right fist clenched on the table. “I tried. I tried to stop her. But I can’t swim too well. She got away from me in the dark.”

“We seem to be talking past each other. When did she get away from you?”

“That night at the lake, Tuesday night I think it was. She went berserk when I told her I suspected her father of killing Dolly. She came at me clawing – I had to hit her to get her off me. It was a bad scene, and it got worse. Before I knew what she was doing, she ran out of the lodge and down to the lake. I plunged in after her, but she was already gone. I’m afraid I panicked then.”

“Is this the truth?”

His eyes came up to mine. “I swear it is. I didn’t tell you and Royal because you would have taken any such admission as a confession of guilt.” He looked at his fist; slowly it came unclenched. “I still can’t prove I didn’t knock her out and drown her.”

“You don’t have to. She didn’t drown in Tahoe. If suicide was in her mind that night, she changed her mind. Evidently she came out of the water after you’d gone.”

“Then she’s still alive!”

“She’s dead, but you didn’t kill her. Her father did. He confessed it along with his other murders before he shot himself.”

“Why in the name of God did he do that?”

“God only knows. She probably accused him to his face of murdering Dolly.”

Emotions warred across Campion’s face: incredulity and relief and self-reproach. He tried to wipe them away with his hand.

“I should never have told Harriet about her father,” he said. “I see now why I should have been honest with you. But I thought you were working for Blackwell, covering up for him.”

“We were both mistaken about each other. Do you want to straighten me out about a few other matters?”

“I suppose so. I seem to be on the truth kick.”

“You were in serious trouble during the Korean War,” I said by way of testing him. “What was it?”

“It was after the war. We were sitting around in Japan waiting for transport.” He made an impatient outward gesture with his arm. “To make a long story short, I hit the officer in charge of the staging point. I broke his nose. He was a Colonel.”

“Did you have a reason, apart from the fact that you don’t like Colonels?”

“My reason may sound foolish to you. He caught me sketching one day and thought it would be dandy if I painted his portrait. I told him I didn’t take orders about my work. We got into a battle of wills. He threatened to keep me over there till I painted him. I hit him. If he’d had a little less rank, or a little more, or if he’d belonged to our unit, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But face had to be saved and I got a year in a detention camp and a D. D. I didn’t paint him, though,” he added with bitter satisfaction.

“You’re a pretty good hater. What do you like?”

“The life of the imagination,” he said. “It’s all I’m good for. Every time I try to do something in the actual world I make a mess of it. I never should have married Dolly, for instance.”

“Why did you?”

“It’s a hard question. I’ve been thinking about the answers to it ever since I got into this jam. The main thing was the money, of course – I’d be a hypocrite if I denied that. She had a little money, call it a dowry. I was trying to prepare a series of pictures for a show, and I needed money to do it. You always need money, at least I do, and so we struck a bargain.”

“You knew about her pregnancy?”

“It was one of the attractions, in a way.”

“Most men would feel the opposite way.”

“I’m not most men. I liked the idea of having a child but I didn’t want to be anybody’s father. I didn’t care who the father was, so long as it wasn’t me. Does that sound foolish? It may have something to do with the fact that my old man did the disappearing-father act when I was four years old.” There was a growl of resentment in his voice.

“Did your father have trouble with the law?”

He said with a sour mocking grin: “My father was the law. He was a lousy Chicago cop, with both front feet in the trough. A bad act. I remember the last time I saw him. I was eighteen at the time, hacking my way through art school. He was helping a blonde into a Cadillac in front of an apartment hotel on the Gold Coast.” He cleared his throat. “Next question.”

“Getting back to Dolly – I’m not quite clear how you felt about her.”

“Neither am I. I started out feeling sorry for her. I thought it might develop into something real – that’s an old boyish dream of mine.” His mouth curled in self-irony. “It didn’t. You know the pity that chills the heart? Oddly enough I never went to bed with her. I loved to paint her, though. That’s my way of loving people. I’m not much good at the other ways.”

“I thought you were a devil with the ladies.”

He flushed. “I’ve done my share of rutting. A lot of them think it’s artistic to bed with an artist. But there was only one in my life I cared about – and that one didn’t last. I was too fouled up.”

“What was her name?”

“Does it matter? Her first name was Anne.”

“Anne Castle.”

He gave me a bright astonished look. “Who told you about her?”

“She did. I was in Ajijic two or three nights ago. She spoke of you with great affection.”

“Well,” he said. “That’s a fresh note for a change. Is Anne all right?”

“She probably would be if she didn’t have you to worry about. It broke her heart when you decamped with Harriet. The least you can do is write her a letter.”

He sat quiet for a time. I think he was composing the letter in his head. To judge by his frowning concentration, he was having a hard time with it.

“If Anne was important to you,” I said, “why did you take up with Harriet?”

“I’d already made a commitment.” His eyes were still turned inward on himself.

“I don’t follow you, Campion.”

“I didn’t meet Harriet in Mexico, as you seem to think. I met her in my own house in Luna Bay several weeks before I went to Mexico. She came to see Dolly and the baby. She and Dolly were old friends. But Dolly wasn’t there that afternoon – she’d taken the baby in for his monthly checkup. Harriet stood around watching me paint. She was an amateur painter herself, and she got very excited over what I was doing. She was quite an excitable girl.”