The Barbarous Coast

Chapter 28

RINA DROVE Frost’s Cadillac. I rode in the back seat with Frost. She had made a pressure bandage and a sling for his arm out of several Dewdrop Inn bath towels. He sat and nursed his arm, refusing to talk, except to give directions.

Beyond the airport, we turned right toward mountains which lay naked and wrinkled under the sun. The road climbed toward the sun, and as it climbed it dwindled, changing to gravel. We came over the first low hump and overlooked a white-floored valley where nothing grew.

Near the crest of the inner slope, a concrete building with a rounded roof was set into the side of the hill. Squat and windowless, it resembled a military strongpoint. It was actually a disused ammunition dump.

Frost said: “She’s in there.”

Rina looked over her shoulder. Her nervous foot on the power brakes jolted the car to a stop. We slipped out under the brilliant sky. A jet track crossed it like a long white scar. I told Rina to stay in the car.

“You can put your gun away,” Frost said. “There’s nobody in there but her.”

I made him climb ahead of me, up the slope to the single door of the building. Sheathed with rusting steel, the door swung half open. A broken padlock hung from its hasp. I pulled the door wide, holding my gun on Frost. A puff of warm air came from the interior. It smelled like an oven where meat had been scorched.

Frost hung back. I forced him to enter ahead of me. We stood on a narrow platform, peering down into dimness. The concrete floor of the dump was about six feet below the level of the entrance. Framed in light, our shadows fell across it. I pushed Frost out of the rectangle of light, and saw what lay on the floor: a wizened thing like a mummy, blackened and consumed by fire instead of by time.

“You did this to her?”

Frost said without conviction: “Hell, no, it was her husband. You should be talking to him. He followed her here from L.A., did you know that? Knocked her off and set fire to the body.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Frost. I’ve been talking to the husband. You flew him here in Stern’s plane to frame him for the killing. You probably brought the body on the same flight. The frame didn’t take, though, and it’s not going to. None of your dirty little plans is working out.”

He was silent for a period of time which was divided into shorter periods by the tic twitching at his eyelid. “It wasn’t my idea, it was Stern’s. And the gasoline was his idea. He said to put her to the torch, so that when they found the body they couldn’t establish when she died. The girl was dead already, see, all we did was cremate her.”

He looked down at the body. It was the image of the thing he feared, and it imposed silence on him. He reached out suddenly with his good arm, clawed at my shoulder and caught hold. “Can’t we get out of here, Lew? I’m a sick man, I can’t stand it in here.”

I shook him off. “When you’ve told me who killed the girl.”

There was another breathing silence. “Isobel Graff killed her,” he said finally.

“How do you know?”

“Marfeld saw her. Marfeld saw her come tearing out of the house with the fantods. He went in, and there was Hester in the living-room. She had her head beaten in with a poker. The poker was lying across her. We couldn’t leave her there. The cops would trace the Graff connection in no time–”

“What was Hester’s connection with Graff?”

“Isobel thought they were shacked up, let’s leave it at that. Anyway, it was up to me to do something with the body. I wanted to chuck it in the ocean, but Graff said no – he has a house on the ocean at Malibu. Then Lance Leonard got this other idea.”

“How did Leonard get into the act?”

“He was a friend of Hester’s. She borrowed his car, he came by to pick it up. Leonard had a key to her house, and he walked in on Marfeld and the body. He had his own reasons for wanting to cover it up, so he suggested getting her sister to help. The two sisters are look-alikes, almost like twins, and Leonard knew both of them. He talked the sister into flying here.”

“What was going to happen to her?”

“That was Carl Stern’s problem. But it looks as though Stern ran out on the whole deal. I don’t see how he can afford to do that.”

“You’re kind of out of touch,” I said. “You used to be an operator. When did you start letting goons and gunsills do your thinking for you?”

Frost grimaced and hung his head. “I’m not myself. I been full of demerol for the last three months.”

“You’re on a demerol kick?”

“I’m a dying man, Lew. My insides are being eaten away. I’m in terrible pain right at this moment. I shouldn’t be walking around.”

“You won’t be walking around. You’ll be sitting in a cell.”

“You’re a hard man, Lew.”

“You keep calling me Lew. Don’t do it. I ought to leave you here to find your own way back.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me?” He caught at me again, chattering. “Listen to me, Lew – Mr. Archer. About that Italy deal. I can get you five hundred a week for twenty-six weeks. No duties, nothing to do. A free holiday–”

“Save it. I wouldn’t touch a nickel of yours with rubber gloves on.”

“But you wouldn’t leave me here?”

“Why not? You left her.”

“You don’t understand. I only did what I had to. We were caught. The girl fixed it herself so that we were caught. She had something on the Man and his wife, evidence against them, and she turned it over to Carl Stern. He forced the deal on us, in a way. I would have handled it differently.”

“So everything you did was Stern’s fault.”

“I don’t say that, but he was calling the signals. We had to co-operate with him. We’ve had to now for months. Stern even forced the Man to lend his name to his big new operation.”

“What evidence does Stern hold against the Graff’s?”

“Would I be likely to tell you?”

“You’re going to tell me. Now. I’m getting sick of you, Frost.”

He backed away from me against the doorpost. The light fell on one side of his face and made his profile look as pale and thin as paper. As if corruption had eaten him away till he was only a surface laid on darkness.

“A gun,” he said. “A target pistol belonging to Mr. Graff. Isobel used it to kill a girl with, a couple of years ago.”

“Where does Stern keep the gun?”

“In a safe-deposit box. I found out that much, but I couldn’t get to it. He was carrying it with him last night, though, in the car. He showed it to me.” His dull eyes brightened yellowly. “You know, Lew, I’m authorized to pay a hundred grand for that little gun. You’re a strong, smart boy. Can you get it away from Stern?”

“Somebody already has. Stern got his throat cut in the course of the night. Or maybe you know that, Frost.”

“No. I didn’t know it. If it’s true, it changes things.”

“Not for you.”

We went outside. Below, the valley floor shimmered in its own white heat. The jet trail which slashed the sky was blurring out. In this anti-human place, the Cadillac on the road looked as irrelevant as a space-ship stalled on the mountains of the moon. Rina stood at the foot of the slope, her face upturned and blank. It was heavy news I carried down to her.