The Drowning Pool

Chapter 21

The yacht’s main cabin was dim and chilly. The early-morning light oozed weakly through the curtained ports and lay in glimmering pools on the built-in mahogany furniture. One bulkhead was almost covered by a photomural of the Acapulco cliffs, the Kilbourne yacht riding below them. Our feet were soundless as undertakers’ on the thickly carpeted floor. Kilbourne went to the head of the table that occupied the center of the cabin, and sat down facing me.

“Sit down, Mr. Archer, sit down. Let me offer you some breakfast.” He tried a genial smile, but the mouth and eyes were too small to carry it. The voice that issued from the great pink face was little and peevish and worried.

“I’d have to be hungrier than I am,” I said.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have a bite myself.” He glanced at the man in the linen suit, who was leaning against the hatch with a gun in his hand. “Melliotes, tell the steward I’ll have breakfast. And let’s have some light on the subject. I haven’t had a good chance to look at our friend’s face.”

Melliotes switched on an overhead light, then leaned out through the hatch to talk to someone at the head of the ladder. I thought of making a break, and my knees tensed with the thought. But without a gun it was hopeless. And Mavis was lying unconscious in a berth just forward of the cabin. I couldn’t run out on her: I hadn’t been able to when I had a better chance. Anyway, this was where I wanted to be. Kilbourne was the man I had to talk to. I said it over to myself: this was where I wanted to be. If I said it often enough, maybe I could believe it.

There was a sharp thud at the other end of the table. Kilbourne had drawn my gun and placed it on the polished mahogany surface within reach of his hand. Tiny fingernails glistened like slivers of mica in the tips of his thick white fingers.

“You’ll pardon this show of weapons, I hope. I’m very much a pacifist myself, but I understand you’re quite the man of violence. I do hope you won’t force us to use these ridiculous guns. Physical violence has always unsettled my stomach.”

“You’re lucky,” I said. “Not everybody can afford to have his killings done for him.”

Melliotes turned sharply and looked at me three-eyed. His own two eyes were dark and glowing. I preferred the gun’s single eye. I couldn’t stare it down, but it bore no malice.

“Please, Mr. Archer.” Kilbourne raised his hand, dead white as a policeman’s in a policeman’s gesture. “You mustn’t leap to rash conclusions before you know the truth of things. The truth is simpler than you suppose and really not at all sinister. I’ve had to take one or two extra-legal shortcuts, I admit, in order to protect my interests. If a man won’t act to protect his own interests, he can’t expect anyone else to. That’s one of the home truths I learned when I was a two-for-a-quarter car salesman in Ypsilanti. I came up from small beginnings, you see. I don’t propose to return to them.”

“Your reminiscences fascinate me. May I take notes?”

“Please,” he said again. “We share a mutual distrust, of course, but there’s nothing more than distrust standing between us. If we could be perfectly frank with each other—”

“I’ll be frank with you. It looks to me as if you hired Reavis to kill the elder Mrs. Slocum, then hired somebody else to kill off Reavis. If that’s so, I’m not going to let you get by with it.”

“The decision is out of your hands, isn’t it?”

I noticed that the table, which was fastened to the deck, was trembling slightly under my forearms. Somewhere aft, the diesels were turning over. Forward, a rattling winch was reeling in the anchor. The screw turned in the water, and the whole craft shuddered.

“After murder,” I said, “kidnapping comes easy.” But I remembered what I had done to Reavis, and felt a twinge of hypocrisy. Remorse and fear mixed in my veins, and made a bitter blend.

“The correct term is ‘shanghaied,’ ” Kilbourne said, with his first real smile. It was a close-mouthed smile of complacence. Like other self-educated men, he was vain of his vocabulary. “But let’s get back to your allegations. You are less than half right. I had nothing whatever to do with the old lady’s death. Ryan conceived the plan by himself, and executed it unaided.”

“He was in your pay, and you stood to profit by her death.”

“Precisely.” His fingers clasped each other like mating worms. “You do understand the situation after all. Innocent as I was, I couldn’t afford to have Ryan caught and questioned. I gave him money to escape. To that extent I confess I was an accessory to the crime. If Ryan had been brought to trial, I’d have been dragged in willy-nilly.”

“So you had to have him silenced.”

“Before the District Attorney could take a statement from him. Precisely. You see, in an atmosphere of candor, we can have a meeting of minds.”

“There’s one place we haven’t met at all. You haven’t explained the important thing: why Reavis wanted to kill her. What was he doing in Nopal Valley in the first place?”

“Let me sketch in the background.” He leaned across the table with his hands still clasped in each other. I couldn’t understand his eagerness to explain, but while it lasted I could use the explanations. “Ryan had been in my employ less than a year. He was my chauffeur, as a matter of fact, and did one or two other small tasks for me.” The shrewd little eyes went blank and imbecile for a moment, as they surveyed the past and Ryan’s part in it. In the alcove out of sight, his wife was snoring gently and rhythmically.

A fine American marriage, I said to myself. There wasn’t much doubt that Kilbourne himself had hired Pat to make love to his wife.

“Early this year,” he continued, “it became inconvenient, for various reasons, to have Ryan as a member of my household. Still, I didn’t want to lose touch with him entirely. I have enemies, of course, and Ryan might have become their willing tool. I put him on the company payroll and cast about for a place to use him. As you probably know, I’d had business dealings with the late Mrs. Slocum. You may not know, however, that before the deal broke down I spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars in the exploration of her property. It occurred to me that it might be desirable to have a representative in her home as a partial protection for my investment. If other groups that are interested in the valley made overtures to her, I’d be in a position to know. So I arranged for Ryan’s employment by the Slocums as their chauffeur. I had no idea he’d take his responsibilities so very seriously.” He raised both hands and smacked them flat on the table. Beneath the sleeves of his blue flannel jacket, the flesh on his forearms quivered for some time.

“Are you sure you had no idea?” I said. “You must have known he was a psychopath, capable of anything.”

“No, I did not. I believed him to be harmless.” His voice was earnest. “Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not pretending to be free from blame. In a moral sense I know I’m responsible for her death. There may even have been an occasion when, thinking out loud in Ryan’s presence, I voiced a wish for her death. I believe there was an occasion of that sort a few weeks ago. In any case, Ryan knew that her continued presence on the scene was costing me hundreds of dollars a day.”

“Why split hairs? He was working for you. You wanted her killed. He killed her.”

“But I did not incite him to murder. Never, at any time. If I were planning a murder, Ryan is the last man I’d choose as my agent. He was a talker, and I didn’t trust him.”

That made sense to me. His whole story made sense, in a crazy way. Against my will and my better judgment, I caught myself half believing it.

“If you didn’t tell him to kill her, why did he do it?”

“I’ll tell you why.” He leaned toward me again and narrowed his eyes. The upper eyelids hung in thick overlapping folds. The eyes themselves were of indeterminate color, dull and opaque as unpolished stones. “Ryan saw an opportunity to tap me for a very great deal. By killing Mrs. Slocum he placed me in jeopardy along with himself. His jeopardy was also mine. I had to help him out of it, and he knew it. Now he didn’t admit as much when he came to me the night before last, but that certainly was in his mind. He asked for ten thousand dollars, and I had to give it to him. When he was careless enough to allow himself to be captured, I had to take other measures. I’d have been wiser to have him shot in the first place, but my humane impulses deterred me. In the end my hand was forced. So while I can’t claim that my motives in this sorry business were wholly pure, neither have they been entirely black.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I like a good solid black better than mottled gray.”

“You don’t have my responsibilities, Mr. Archer. A great company depends on me. A single misstep on my part can destroy the livelihood of thousands of people.”

“I wonder if you’re that important,” I said. “I think life would go on without you.”

“That isn’t the point at issue.” He smiled as if he’d uttered a witticism. “The point is whether life can go on without you. I’ve gone to a good deal of trouble to explain my position. I’ve hoped that if you understood it, you’d take a somewhat different attitude toward me. You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Archer, and, to be frank, I like you. Also, I abhor killing, as I’ve told you. There’s the further fact that my wife seems to admire you, and if I were to have you put away she’d certainly be aware of it and perhaps even try to make trouble. I can deal with her, of course. I can even endure the thought of another death, if you prove its necessity to me. But I’d so much rather handle this thing in a rational, urbane way. Wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll listen. How much?”

“Good. Fine.” The little mouth curled upwards like a cherub’s. “I believe you have ten thousand dollars of mine. I don’t know for sure, but it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If you were to admit that you have it, it would be very valuable proof of your good faith.”

“I have it,” I said, “out of your reach.”

“Keep it. It’s yours.” He waved his hand in a fat and royal gesture.

“What do I do for it?”

“Nothing. Nothing whatever. I’ll put you ashore at San Pedro and you can simply forget that I ever existed at all. Take up your own affairs again, or go for a long vacation and enjoy yourself.”

“I have the money now.”

“But not the means to enjoy it. That is still in my gift.”

The yacht was beginning to pitch and roll in the open sea. I glanced at the man in the linen suit, still stationed by the door with his three eyes on me. His legs were wide and braced against the vessel’s movement. The gun was steady. While my glance was on it, he shifted it from one hand to the other.

“You can relax, Melliotes,” Kilbourne said. “We’re well away from shore.” He turned back to me: “Well, Mr. Archer, will you accept the gift of freedom on those terms?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I have no wish to hurry you. Your decision is an important one, to both of us.” Then his face lit up like a man’s who has heard his sweetheart’s footsteps: “My breakfast, I do believe.”

It came on a silver tray that was almost too wide for the hatchway. The white-jacketed mulatto steward was sweating under its weight. Kilbourne greeted each dish separately as the metal covers were lifted. Next to Walter Kilbourne, food was his one true love.

He ate with a gobbling passion. A piece of ham and four eggs, six pieces of toast; a kidney and a pair of mountain trout; eight pancakes with eight small sausages; a quart of raspberries, a pint of cream, a quart of coffee. I watched him the way you watch the animals at the zoo, hoping he’d choke to death and settle things for both of us.

He leaned back in his chair at last and told the steward to take the empty dishes away.

“Well, Mr. Archer?” The white fingers crawled through his thin pink curls. “What is your decision?”

“I haven’t thought it through yet. One thing, how do you know you can trust me?”

“I don’t know that I can. Rather than have your blood on my hands, I’m willing to take a certain amount of risk. But I do think I can recognize an honest man when I see one. That ability is the foundation of my success, to be perfectly frank.” His voice was still thick with the passion of eating.

“There’s a contradiction in your thinking,” I said. “If I took your dirty money, you wouldn’t be able to trust my honesty.”

“But you have my dirty money now, Mr. Archer. You secured it through you own alert efforts. No further effort on your part is required, except that I presume you’ll scour it thoroughly before you spend it. Of course I realize how foolish I would be to place my whole dependence on your honesty, or any man’s. I’d naturally expect you to sign a receipt for it, indicating the nature of the services rendered.”

“Which were?”

“Exactly what you did. A simple notation, ‘For capture and delivery of Pat Ryan,’ will suffice. That will kill two birds with one stone. It will cancel out my payment to Ryan, which is the only real evidence against me in Mrs. Slocum’s death. And more important, it will protect me in case your honesty should ever falter, and the murder of Pat Ryan come to trial.”

“I’ll be an accessory before the fact.”

“A very active one. Precisely. You and I will be in the position of having to co-operate with each other.”

I caught the implication. I watched it grow in my mind into a picture of myself five years, ten years later, doing dirty errands for Walter Kilbourne and not being able to say no. My gorge rose.

But I answered him very reasonably: “I can’t stick my neck out that far. There were half a dozen men involved in Ryan’s death. If any of them talks, that tears it open.”

“Not at all. Only one of them had any connection with me.”

“Schmidt.”

The eyebrows ascended his forehead like surprised pink caterpillars. “You know Schmidt? You are active indeed.”

“I know him well enough to stay clear of his company. If the police put a finger on him, and they will, he’ll break down and spill everything.”

“I am aware of that.” The cherub mouth smiled soothingly. “Fortunately, you can set your mind at rest. Oscar Schmidt went out with the tide this morning. Melliotes took care of him for all of us.”

The man in the linen suit was sitting on the leather bench that lined the after bulkhead. He showed his teeth in a white and happy smile and stroked the fluted barrel of his gun.

“Remarkable,” I said. “Ryan takes care of Mrs. Slocum. Schmidt takes care of Ryan. Melliotes takes care of Schmidt. That’s quite a system you have.”

“I’m very pleased that you like it.”

“But who takes care of Melliotes?”

Kilbourne looked from me to the gunman, whose mouth was expressionless again, and back to me. For the first time our interests formed a triangle, which relieved me of some pressure.

“You ask very searching questions,” he replied. “I owe it to your intelligence to inform you that Melliotes took care of himself several years ago. A young girl of my acquaintance, one of my employees to be exact, disappeared in Detroit. Her body turned up in the Detroit River a few days later. A certain unlicensed medical practitioner who shall be nameless was wanted for questioning. I was on my way to California at the time, and I offered him a lift in my private plane. Does that answer your question?”

“It does. I wanted to know exactly what I was being offered a piece of. Now that I know, I don’t want it.”

He looked at me incredulously. “You don’t seriously mean that you want to die?”

“I expect to outlive you,” I said. “You’re a little too smart to have me bumped before you recover you thousand-dollar bills. That money really worries you, doesn’t it?”

“The money means nothing to me. Look, Mr. Archer, I am prepared to double the amount.” He brought a gold-cornered wallet out of an inside pocket and dealt ten bills onto the table. “But twenty thousand is my absolute limit.”

“Put your money away. I don’t want it.”

“I warn you,” he said more sharply, “your bargaining position is weak. One reaches a point of diminishing returns, where it would be cheaper and more convenient to have you killed.”

I looked at Melliotes. His glowing eyes were on Kilbourne. He hefted the gun in his hand, and asked a question with his knitted black eyebrows.

“No,” Kilbourne said to him. “What is it that you want, if not money, Mr. Archer? Women perhaps, or power, or security? I could find a place in my organization for a man that I can trust. I wouldn’t waste my words on you, frankly, if I didn’t happen to like you.”

“You can’t trust me,” I said, though the fear of death had dried my lips and tightened the muscles of my throat.

“That’s precisely what I like about you. You have a certain stubborn honesty—”

“I don’t like you,” I said. Or maybe I croaked it.

Kilbourne’s face was expressionless, but his white fingers plucked petulantly at each other. “Melliotes. We’ll give Mr. Archer a little longer to make up his mind. Do you have your pacifier?”

The man in the linen suit stood up in eager haste. His brown hand flicked into a pocket and came out dangling a polished leather thing like an elongated pear. It moved in the air too fast for me to avoid it.