The Barbarous Coast

Chapter 16

I WENT in by the broken lanai door and through to the front. Feet were busy on the floor over my head. I heard quick, clacking heels and a girl’s tuneless humming. I climbed the stairs, leaning part of my weight on the banister. At the end of the upstairs hallway, light spilled from the doorway of the front bedroom. I moved along the wall to a point from which I could see into the room.

The girl was standing by the canopied bed with her back to me. She was very simply dressed in a tweed skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse. Her bright hair was brushed slick round the curve of her skull. A white leather suitcase with a blue silk lining lay open on the bed. She was folding some kind of black dress into it, tenderly.

She straightened and went to the far side of the room, her hips swinging from a flexible small waist. She opened the mirrored door of a closet and entered its lighted interior. When she came out, with more clothes in her arms, I was in the room.

Her body went stiff. The bright-colored dresses fell to the floor. She stepped backward against the mirrored door, which closed with a snap.

“Hello, Hester. I thought you were dead.”

Her teeth showed, and she pressed her knuckles against them. She said behind the knuckles: “Who are you?”

“The name is Archer. Don’t you remember me from this morning?”

“Are you the detective – the one that Lance had a fight with?”

I nodded.

“What do you want with me?”

“A little talk.”

“You get out of here.” She glanced at the ivory telephone on the bedside table, and said uncertainly: “I’ll call the police.”

“I doubt that very much.”

She took her hand away from her mouth and laid it against her side below the swell of her breast, as though she felt a pain there. Anger and anxiety wrenched at her face, but she was one of those girls who couldn’t look ugly. There was a sculptured beauty built into her bones, and she held herself with a sense that her beauty would look after her.

“I warn you,” she said, “some friends of mine are coming, any minute now.”

“Fine. I’d like to meet them.”

“You think so?”

“I think so.”

“Stick around if you like, then,” she said. “Do you mind I go on with my packing?”

“Go right ahead, Hester. You are Hester Campbell, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer me or look at me. She picked up the fallen dresses, carried the rustling sheaf to the bed, and began to pack.

“Where are you going at this time of night?” I said.

“It’s no concern of yours.”

“Cops might be interested.”

“Might they? Go and tell them, why don’t you? Do anything you like.”

“That’s kind of reckless talk for a girl on the lam.”

“I’m not on the lam, as you put it, and you don’t frighten me.”

“You’re just going away for a weekend in the country.”

“Why not?”

“I heard you tell Lance this morning that you wanted out.”

She didn’t react to the name as I’d half suspected she would. Her deft hands went on folding the last of the dresses. I liked her courage, and distrusted it. There could be a gun in the suitcase. But when she finally turned she was empty-handed.

“Wanted out of what?” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I couldn’t care less.” But she cared.

“These friends of yours who are coming here – is Lance Leonard one of them?”

“Yes, and you better get out before he does come.”

“You’re sure he’s coming?”

“You’ll see.”

“It ought to be something to see. Who’s going to carry the basket?”

“The basket?” she said in a high little voice.

“Lance isn’t getting around much any more. They have to carry him in a basket.”

Her hand went to her side again. The pain had risen higher. Her body moved angrily, hips and shoulders, trying to pass through the narrow space between the bed and me. I blocked her way.

“When did you see him last?”

“Tonight.”

“What time tonight?”

“I don’t know. Several hours-ago. Does it matter?”

“It matters to you. How was he when you left him?”

“He was fine. Why, has something happened to him?”

“You tell me, Hester. You leave a trail of destruction like Sherman marching through Georgia.”

“What happened? Is he hurt?”

“Badly hurt.”

“Where is he?”

“At home. He’ll soon be in the morgue.”

“He’s dying?”

“He’s dead. Didn’t Carl Stern tell you?”

She shook her head. It was more of a convulsion than a denial. “Lance couldn’t be dead. You’re crazy.”

“Sometimes I think I’m the only one who isn’t.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. A row of tiny droplets stood along her peaked hairline. She brushed at them with her hand, and her right breast rose with the movement of her arm. She looked up at me, her eyes sleepy with shock. She was a very good actress, if she was acting.

I didn’t think she was. “Your good friend is dead,” I said. “Somebody shot him.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe I should have brought along the body. Shall I tell you where he took the slugs? One in the temple, one in the eye. Or do you know all this? I don’t want to bore you to death.”

Her forehead crinkled. Her mouth stretched in the tragic rectangle.

“You’re horrible. You’re making all this up, trying to make me tell you things. You said the same thing about – about me – that I was dead.” Tears started in her eyes. “You’d say anything to make me talk.”

“What kind of things could you tell me if you did?”

“I don’t have to answer your questions, any of them.”

“Give it a little thought, and you might want to. It looks as though they’re using you for a patsy.”

She gave me a bewildered look.

“You are kind of naïve, aren’t you, in view of the company you keep? Nice company. They’re setting you up for a murder rap. They saw a chance to kill two birds with one stone, to knock off Lance and you at the same time.”

I was playing by ear, but it was a familiar tune to me, and she was listening hard. She said in a hushed voice: “Who would do such a thing?”

“Whoever talked you into taking a trip.”

“Nobody talked me into it. I wanted to.”

“Whose idea was it? Leroy Frost’s?”

Her gaze flickered and dimmed.

“What did Frost tell you to do? W`here did he tell, you to go?”

“It wasn’t Mr. Frost. It was Lance who contacted me. So what you say can’t be true. He wouldn’t plan his own murder.”

“Not if he knew what the plan was. Obviously he didn’t. They conned him into it the same way they conned you.”

“Nobody conned me,” she said stubbornly. “Why would anybody try to con me?’

“Come off it, Hester, you’re no ingénue. You know better than I do what you’ve been doing.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“People have different standards, don’t they? Some of us think that blackmail is the dirtiest game in the world.”

“Blackmail?”

“Look around you, and stop pretending. Don’t tell me Graff’s been giving you things because he likes the way you do your hair. I’ve seen a lot of blackmail in this town, it’s got so I can smell it on people. And you’re in it up to your neck.”

She fingered her neck. Her resistance to suggestion was wearing thin. She looked around at the pink walls and slowly turned their color. It was an authentic girlish blush, the first I had seen for some time, and it made me doubtful. She said: “You’re inventing all this.”

“I have to. You won’t tell me anything. I go by what I see and hear. A girl leaves her husband, takes up with a washed-up fighter who runs with mobsters. In no time at all, you’re in the chips. Lance has a movie contract, you have your nice big house in Beverly Hills. And Simon Graff turns out to be your fairy godmother. Why?”

She didn’t answer. She looked down at her hands twisting in her lap.

“What have you been selling him?” I said. “And what has Gabrielle Torres got to do with it?”

The color had drained out of her face, leaving it wan, blue-shadowed around the eyes. Her gaze turned inward on an image in her mind. The image seemed to appall her.

“I think you know who killed her,” I said. “If you do, you’d better tell me. It’s time to break these things out into the open, before more people are killed. Because you’ll be next, Hester.”

Her lips flew open like a dummy’s controlled by a ventriloquist: “I’m not–” Her will took over, biting the sentence off.

She shook her head fiercely, dislodging tears from her eyes. She covered her streaked face with her hands and flung herself sideways on the bed. Fear ran through her, silent and rigorous as an electric current, shaking her entire body. Something that felt like pity rose from the center of mine. The trouble with pity was that it always changed to something else – repulsion or desire. She lay still now, one hip arching up in a desolate slope.

“Are you going to tell me about Gabrielle?”

“I don’t know anything to tell you.” Her voice was small muffled.

“Do you know who shot Lance?”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“What did Carl Stern say to you?”

“Nothing. We had a date. He wanted to postpone it, that’s all.”

“What kind of a date?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Is he going to take you for a ride?”

“Perhaps.” She seemed to miss the implication.

“A one-way ride?”

This time she caught it, and sat up almost screaming: “Get away from me, you sadist. I know your kind. I’ve seen police detectives, and the way they torment helpless people. If you’re a man at all, you’ll get out of here.”

Her torso was twisted sideways, her breasts sharp under the white blouse. Her red lips curled, and her eyes sparked blue. She was an extraordinarily good-looking girl, but there was more to her than that. She sounded like a straight one.

I caught myself doubting my premises, doubting that she could be any kind of hustler. Besides, there was just enough truth in her accusation, enough cruelty in my will to justice, enough desire in my pity, to make the room uncomfortable for me. I said good-night and left it.

The problem was to love people, try to serve them, without wanting anything from them. I was a long way from solving that one.