The Way Some People Die (22 page)

“I’m afraid,” he said, “afraid of the dark. I never been out here at night.”

“You’ll never go back if you keep this up. Now walk ahead of me.”

He was clinging to the door handle. I pushed him upright with the revolver muzzle, and prodded him into the road. He lurched ahead of me.

Below the curve the lane broadened into a small clearing. A cabin of rough-hewn logs sat in the clearing, one square lit window facing us. A man’s shadow moved there, growing until it covered the whole window. Then the light died behind it. There was a long dark car parked beside the cabin.

“Call him,” I said to the man at the end of my gun. The flashlight was in my left hand.

His first attempt was a dry gasp.

“Keep moving and call him. Tell him who you are. Tell him that I’m a friend.”

“Mr. Speed,” he cried thinly. “It’s Mosquito.”

We were halfway across the clearing. “Louder,” I said in his ear, and jabbed him in the kidneys with the muzzle.

“Mr. Speed.” His voice cracked.

I pushed him on ahead of me. The door opened inward as Mosquito set his feet on the plank stoop.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice said from the deep inside shadow.

“Mosquito.”

“What do you want? Who’s with you?”

“A friend.”

“What friend?” The hidden voice rose in pitch.

I’d got as far as I could with that approach. Even with tear gas, tommyguns and a police cordon, there is no way to take a desperate man without risking your life. I had an advantage over Speed, of course. I knew that he was still convalescing from Blaney’s bullet, and was probably gun-shy.

I stepped around Mosquito. “The name is Archer. A Mrs. Henry Fellows”—I pronounced the name carefully—”hired me to look for you.”

Before I finished speaking, I pressed my flashlight button. The white beam fanned the doorway. Speed crouched there, a massive figure with a black gun in his hand. We faced each other for a long tense instant. Either of us could have shot the other. I was so sharply aware of him, I felt his gun wound burning a hole in my own belly.

The starch went out of him suddenly. Without seeming to move, he shifted from the offensive to the defensive. “What do you want?” His pale bright eyes looked down at his gun, as if it was the gun that had somehow failed him.

“You might as well drop it,” I said. “I have you covered.”

He flung it down in a gesture of self-disgust. It skittered across the rough planks toward me. Instinctively, Mosquito moved to retrieve it. I set my foot on the gun and elbowed him back.

“Go away, Mosquito,” I said, watching Speed. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“Where should I go?” He sounded both hurt and unbelieving.

“Anywhere but San Francisco. Start walking.”

“All by myself? Out here?”

“Start walking.”

He stepped off the porch into gray gloom. I didn’t waste a backward glance on him. “We’ll go into the house,” I said to Speed. “You better hold your hands on top of your head.”

“You’re exceedingly masterful.” He was recovering his style, or whatever it was that kept him upright and made him interesting to women. On the shooting level he was a bum, as useless as a cat in a dogfight. But he had his own feline dignity, even with his hands up.

I picked up his gun, a light automatic with the safety still on, and juggled it into my pocket, holding the flash under my arm. “About face, colonel. No false moves, unless you want a hole in the back to match the one in the front.”

He turned in the doorway. I stayed close behind him as he crossed the room and relit the oil lamp. The flame steadied and brightened, casting a widening circle of light across the bare floor and up into the rafters. The room contained a built-in bunk, a cheap pine table, two kitchen chairs and a canvas deck-chair placed by the stone fireplace. A pair of new leather suitcases stood unopened at the end of the bunk. There was no fire in the fireplace, and the room was cold.

“Sit down.” I waved my gun at the deck-chair.

“You’re very kind.” He sprawled in the chair with his long legs spraddled in front of him. “Is it necessary for me to retain the hands-on-head position? It makes me feel ridiculous.”

“You can relax.” I sat down facing him in one of the kitchen chairs.

“Thank you.” He lowered his hands and clasped them in his lap, but he didn’t relax. His entire body was taut. The attempt he made to smile was miserable, and he abandoned it. He raised one hand to shield his worried mouth. The hand stayed there of its own accord, brushing back and forth across his thin brown eyebrow of mustache. Its fingernails were bitten down to the quick. “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

“We’ve seen each other. This is a comedown after the Oasis Inn.”

“It is, rather. Are you a detective?”

I nodded.

“I’m surprised at Marjorie.” But he showed no emotion
of any kind. His face was unfocused, sagging wearily on its bones. Deep lines dragged from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His fingers began to explore them. “I didn’t think she would go to such lengths.”

“You hurt her feelings,” I said. “It’s never a good idea to hurt a woman’s feelings. If you have to rob them, you should try to do it without hurting their feelings.”

“Rob is a pretty strong word to use. She gave me the money to invest for her. She’ll get it back, I promise you.”

“And your word is as good as your bond, eh? How good is your bond?”

“One week,” he said. “Give me one week. I’ll pay it back with interest gladly.”

“How about now?”

“That’s impossible. I don’t have the money now. It’s already invested.”

“In real estate?”

“In real estate, yes.” The pale eyes flickered. The exploring hand climbed up to them and masked them for a moment.

“Don’t rack your brain for a story, Speed. I know where the money went.”

He peered at me, still hiding behind his fingers. “I suppose Mosquito told you?”

“Mosquito told me nothing.”

“She tapped my phone at the Inn, then. The sweet sow.” The hand slid down his face to his throat, where it pinched the loose skin between thumb and forefinger. “Oh, the sweet sow.” But he couldn’t work up any anger. The things that had been done to him looked worse and more important than the things he could do in return. He was sick of himself. “Well, what do you want with me? I guarantee she’ll have her money back in a week.”

“You can’t see over the edge of the next five minutes,
and you’re talking about a week. In a week you may be dead.”

A half-smile deepened the lines on one side of his face. “I may at that. And you may too. I certainly wish it for you.”

“Who did you pay the money to?”

“Joe Tarantine. I wouldn’t try to get it back from him if I were you.”

“Where is he?”

He lifted his broad shoulders, and dropped them. “I don’t know, and I haven’t any desire to. Joe isn’t one of my bosom pals, exactly.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Two nights ago,” he said, after some reflection.

“When you bought the heroin from him?”

“You seem to know my business better than I do.” He leaned toward me, drawing his legs back. I moved the revolver to remind him of it.

“Put the gun away, please. What did you say your name was?”

“Archer.” I kept the gun where it was, supported on my knee.

“How much is Marjorie paying you, Archer?”

“Enough.”

“Whatever it is, I could pay you much better. If you’ll give me a little leeway. A little time.” “I don’t think so.”

“I have two kilos of pure heroin. Do you know how much that’s worth on the present market?”

“I haven’t been following the quotations. Fill me in.”

“A clean hundred thousand, if I have the time to make the necessary contacts. A hundred thousand, over and above my debt to the sweet sow.” For the first time, he was showing a little animation. “I’m not even suggesting you
double-cross her. All I ask is time. Four days should do it.”

“While I sit holding a gun on you?”

“You can put it away.”

“I think you’re trying to con me the way you conned Marjorie. For all I know, you have the money on you.”

He compressed the flesh around his eyes, trying to force them into an expression of earnest sincerity. Surrounded by puckered skin, they stayed pale and cold and shallow. “You’re quite mistaken, old man.” I’d wondered where Mosquito got the phrase. “You can take a look at my wallet if you like.” His hand moved toward the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Keep your hands in sight. What about your suitcases?”

“Go right ahead and search them. They’re not locked.” Which probably meant there was nothing important in the suitcases.

He turned his head to look at the expensive luggage, and revealed a different face. Full-face, he looked enough like a gentleman to pass for one in southern California: his face was oval and soft, almost gentle around the mouth, with light hair waving back from a wide sunburned forehead. In profile, his saddle nose and lantern jaw gave him the look of an aging roughneck; the slack skin twisted into diagonal folds under his chin.

He had fooled me in a way: I hadn’t been able to reach in behind the near-gentlemanly front. My acceptance of the front had even built it up for Speed a little. He was more at ease than he had been, in spite of the gun on my knee.

I spoke to the ravaged old man behind the front: “You’re on your last legs, Speed. I guess you know that.”

His head turned back to me, losing ten years. He said nothing, but there was a kind of questioning assent in the eyes.

“You can’t buy me,” I said. “The way things stand, you can’t angle out of this rap. You’ve made your big try for a comeback, and it’s failed.”

“What is this leading up to? Or do you simply enjoy hearing yourself make speeches?”

“I have to take you back with me. There’s the matter of Marjorie’s money, for one thing—”

“She’ll never get it if you take me back, not a red cent of it.”

“Then she’ll have the satisfaction of jailing you. She’s in the mood to push it to the limit. Not to mention what the police will do. They’ll have a lot of questions to ask you about this and that, particularly Dalling’s murder.”

“Dalling’s murder?” His face thinned and turned sallow. “Who is Dalling?” But he knew who Dalling was, and knew I knew he knew.

“If they ever let you out, Dowser and Blaney will be waiting for you.” I piled it on. “Last time they had no special grudge against you. All they wanted was your territory. This time they’ll cut you to pieces, and you know it. I wouldn’t insure your life for a dime if you paid me a hundred-dollar premium.”

“You’re one of Dowser’s troopers.” He looked at my gun and couldn’t look away. I raised it so he could see the round hole in the barrel, the peephole into darkness.

“How about it, Speed? Do you come south with me, or settle with me here?”

“Settle?” he said, still with his eyes on the gun.

“I’m going back with you or the heroin, one or the other.”

“To Dowser?”

“You’re a good guesser. If Danny gets his shipment back, he won’t care so much about you.”

He said, with an effort: “I’ll split with you. We can clear a hundred thousand between us. Fifty thousand for
you. I have a contact in the east, he’s flying out tomorrow.” The effort left him breathless.

“You can’t buy me,” I repeated. “Hand it over.”

“If I do, what happens to me?”

“It’s up to you. Climb into your car and drive as fast as you can as far as you can. Or walk due west until you hit the ocean and keep on walking.”

He raised his eyes to mine. His face was old and sick. “I should have shot you when I had the chance.”

“You should have, but you didn’t. You’re washed up, as I said.”

“Yes,” he said to himself. “I am washed up.” His voice was almost cheerful, in a wry thin way. I got the impression that he had never really expected to succeed, and was taking a bitter satisfaction from his own foresight.

“You’re wasting my time. Where is it?”

“I’ll give you a straight answer to that if you’ll give me a straight answer to this. Who tipped my hand to you? I don’t expect to do anything about it. I’d simply like to know.”

“Nobody did.”

“Nobody?”

“I put together a couple of hunches and a lot of leg-work, and worked it out for myself. You won’t believe that, naturally.”

“Oh, I believe it. Anyway, what difference does it make?” He shook his head fretfully, bored by the answer to his own question. “The lousy stuff is in a tobacco can in the kitchen cupboard.”

I found it there.

CHAPTER
29
:     
I had made up my mind about
Ruth before I got back to the Grandview Hotel. I knew if I didn’t go back for her I wouldn’t be able to forget her. A teen-aged girl with heroin in her veins was the stuff bad dreams were made of.

The lobby was dark and deserted except where the night clerk sat behind his desk with a science-fiction magazine propped in front of him. He descended from inter-galactic space to give me a quick once-over. Neither of us spoke. I went up in the elevator and down the red-lit corridor again to 307.

The girl was sleeping as I had left her, on her side, her knees bent double and her long thighs clasped to her breast. She stirred and sighed when I closed the door and crossed the room to look at her. The short gold hair fallen across her face moved in and out with her breathing. I pushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. She raised her free arm as if to protect her head from attack, but she slept on. She was sunk deep in sleep, maybe beyond my reach.

I filled the bathroom glass with cold water again, straightened her out on the bed, and poured the water over her face. He eyelids fluttered open, and she swore.

“Rise and shine, Ruth.”

“Go away, you’re rocking my dreamboat.” She flipped over onto her stomach, and buried her wet face in the soaking pillow.

I flipped her back. “Hey, kid! You’ve got to get up.”

“No. Please,” she whined, her eyes tight shut again.

I refilled the glass and brought it back from the bathroom. “More water?”

“No!” She sat up, calling me names.