The Drowning Pool

Chapter 7

Two more drinks, which I paid for, restored Reavis’s opinion of himself and the use of his tongue. He told me how he was promoted in the field on Guadalcanal, to become the youngest captain in the whole Pacific. How the OSS heard of his prowess and gave him a hush-hush assignment tracking down spies and saboteurs. How the Saturday Evening Post offered him several thousand dollars for an article about his personal experiences, but he was sworn to secrecy and besides he had other sources of income. He told me he could walk a city block on his hands, and frequently did. He was going through an interminable list of the female friends he had served and sent on their way rejoicing, when someone came up behind me and tapped my shoulder.

A dirty fedora, dirty-gray eyes, a long probing nose with a slightly bulbous tip, a lipless mouth like the wrinkle formed by a scar. His face was lopsided in the bar mirror and still looked lopsided when I turned. The corners of his mouth had tobacco-juice stains.

“Lewis Archer?”

“Right.”

“I found your car down the street and I figured you were in one of the places along here. I’m Franks, Detective-Sergeant.”

“Parking trouble? I didn’t see any signs.”

The scar tore open and showed some yellow teeth. It seemed that Detective-Sergeant Franks registered amusement in this way. “Death trouble, Mr. Archer. The Chief phoned down and said to pick you up.”

“Mrs. Slocum,” I said, and I realized I’d liked her pretty well. Too often the human ones were the ones that got in the way.

“Now how would you know it was the old lady—”

“It’s not the young Mrs. Slocum then—James Slocum’s wife?”

“Naw, the old lady,” he said, as if that could be taken for granted.

“What happened to her?”

“Don’t you know? I thought maybe you’d know. The Chief says you’re the last one that seen her alive.” He averted his face coyly and spat on the floor.

I got up suddenly. His hand went to his right hip and stayed there. “What happened to her?” I said.

“The old girl got drowned. They found her in the swimming-pool a little while ago. Maybe she jumped in for fun, or maybe somebody pushed her. You don’t go swimming at night with all your clothes on. Not if you can’t swim a stroke and got a weak heart in the bargain. The Chief says it looks like murder.”

I glanced at Reavis; and saw that his stool was unoccupied. The door marked Gents was oscillating slightly on its hinges. I moved for it and pushed it wide. At the far end of the passage the shadow of a big man moved in an open doorway and disappeared. Simultaneously a gun went off behind me and something jarred the door under my hand. A spent slug dropped to the floor at my feet among a shower of slivers. I picked it up and turned to face Franks, tossing the slug from hand to hand because it was hot. He advanced crabwise, with a service .45 steady in his hand.

“You coming peaceable, or do I shoot to maim this time?” The people in the room had formed a group behind him, a heaving body with twenty staring heads. Antonio, still and scornful, watched from behind the bar.

“Trigger-happy, Sergeant? Who gave a gun with real live shells in it?”

“Hands up, you, and watch your lip.”

I tossed him the piece of lead and put my hands on my head. My hair was thinner than it used to be. He caught the slug in his left hand and dropped it in the coat-pocket of his shiny blue umpire suit. “Now march, you.”

He circled me cautiously, and the crowd made way for us. When I opened the door a small shiny object whizzed past my head and rang on the sidewalk. It took me a minute to realize what it was: the fifty-cent piece I had left on the bar as a tip for Antonio. Then I began to get angry.

When Franks unsnapped the handcuffs from his belt, I was ready to fight him for them. He saw that, and didn’t insist. Instead, he put me in the front seat of the police car, beside the uniformed driver, and sat in the back where he could watch me.

“The siren, Kenny,” he said. “The Chief wants him there in a hurry.”

A fool in an official job, with guns and gadgets to play with, could cause a lot of disturbance. The siren purred, growled, whooped, screeched and ululated like a mountain lion as we went up the hill. I didn’t say a word. Detective-Sergeant Franks wouldn’t know an explanation if it bit him in the leg and called him brother.

His Chief was another story. He had set up a temporary office in the kitchen and was questioning the witnesses one by one, while a uniformed policeman took notes in shorthand. When the sergeant took me in to him, Knudson was talking to Francis Marvell. The authority I had noticed in his bearing had flared up in the emergency, like a slow fire doused with gasoline. The opaque eyes and the thick face were full of life and power. Homicide was his dish.

“Archer?” The heavy voice was crisp.

“This is him, Chief.” Sergeant Franks was staying close to me, still with his hand on his gun.

“I’d like to congratulate the sergeant,” I said. “He only one shot to bring me in. And I’m a witness in a murder, and you know how serious that is.”

“Murder?” Marvell spread his hands on the red plastic-topped table and pushed himself to his feet. His jaw moved down and up silently before more words came out. “I understood it was an accident.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Knudson snapped. “Sit down.” He used the same tone on Franks: “What’s this about shooting?”

“He tried to escape, so I fired a warning shot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I made a wild break for freedom.”

He whirled on me: “If you didn’t try to escape, why did you go for the door?”

“I needed a breath of fresh air, Sergeant. Now I need another one.”

“Break it up,” Knudson cut in. “Franks, you go out and help Winowsky with his photographic equipment. You, Archer, sit down and I’ll be with you shortly.”

I sat down in a straightbacked kitchen chair on the other side of the room and lit a cigarette. It tasted bitter. A large wooden tray of what had been hors d’oeuvres stood on the tiled sink beside me: the remains of anchovies, a little earthenware crock half full of caviar. I helped myself to some caviar on a cracker. Mrs. Slocum had lived well.

Marvell said: “You didn’t tell me she was murdered. You permitted me to think it was an accident.” He sounded badly shaken. His yellow hair was wet, but the water that glistened on his forehead came from his own pores.

“They’re no deader when they’re murdered. In any case, we don’t know if she was.”

“Murder is such a perfectly dreadful thought.” His blurred gaze wandered around the room and skipped past me. “It was bad enough when I found the poor woman’s body. Now I simply know I shan’t sleep a wink tonight.”

“Take it easy, Mr. Marvell. You did exactly the right thing and you should be feeling more than satisfied with yourself.” Knudson’s rippling bass was gentle and bland. “One thing I don’t quite understand, though, and that is why you decided to take a swim all by yourself after dark.”

“I don’t entirely understand it myself,” Marvell answered slowly. “It was one of those half-conscious motivations, I believe. I’d just stepped outside for a bit to smell the jasmine, and I was strolling in the loggia, when I thought I heard a splash from the swimming-pool. It had no sinister connotations, you know, nothing like that; I must have thought that someone else was taking a dip, and I decided to join them. I’m always one for fun and games, you see—”

“I see.”

“Well, first I went down to the pool to see who it was—”

“Right after you heard the splash?”

“No, not immediately. It took a little while for the idea to grow on me—”

“And meanwhile the splashing continued?”

“I believe it did. Yes, I think it must have. By the time I got down there, however—it’s quite a piece from the house—”

“Nearly a hundred yards. By the time you got down there?”

“It was perfectly silent again, and perfectly dark. Naturally I was a little surprised to find that the lights weren’t on. I stood by the pool for a moment, wondering what had happened, and then I made out this round dark object. It was a large straw hat floating upside down in the water, and when I realized that I became alarmed. I switched on the underwater lights, and saw her. She was lying face down at the bottom of the pool, her hair swirling round her head, her skirt billowing, her arms spread out. It was ghastly.” The water from his pores had made bright marks along his cheeks and formed a single clear droplet at the point of his chin. He brushed it away with the back of a nervous hand.

“Then you went in after her,” Knudson stated.

“Yes. I took off my clothes, all but my underthings, and brought her to the surface. I found I couldn’t raise her onto the side, so I pulled her to the shallow end and got her out there. She was terribly hard to handle. I’d thought that dead people were stiff, but she seemed loose all over. Like soft rubber.” A second droplet formed.

“It was then that you raised the alarm?”

“Yes. I should have done before, but all I could think of was to get that poor dear woman out of the cold water.”

“You did just fine, Mr. Marvell. A minute or two didn’t make any difference, anyway. Now I want you to think carefully before you answer this: how much time elapsed between the initial splash and the alarm? It was twenty to nine when you called for help. You see, I’m trying to fix the time of death.”

“I understand that. It’s very hard to say how long it was, impossible in fact. I was lost in the beauty of the night, you know, and I wasn’t consciously taking note of time, or of what I heard. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been twenty, I really couldn’t say.”

“Well, think about it some more, and let me know if you can set it more definitely. You’re perfectly certain, by the way, that you didn’t see anybody else at all at the pool, or while you were back of the house?”

“As certain as I can be, yes. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Of course. And thank you.”

Marvell left the room in a nervous sidewise movement, stroking his hair with his hand.

“Jesus,” Knudson said as he stood up. “He never saw a stiff before, let alone touched one, and it hit him in the middle. It takes guts to dive for a cadaver at night, though. You get all of that, Eddie?”

“All but the gestures.” The man in uniform stroked himself elaborately from hairline to nape.

“Okay, take a little walk while I talk to Archer here.” He crossed the room and stood above me with fists on hips until the door had closed. I put some caviar on a cracker and ate it daintily, in two bites.

“Have some?”

He didn’t answer that. “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

I took out my wallet and showed him the photostat of my license. “Now ask me what the hell I’m doing here. Unfortunately my chronic aphasia has taken a bad turn for the worse. It always goes like that when a dumb cop takes a shot at me.”

He wagged his studded head good-humoredly. “Forget Franks, eh? I can’t help it if he’s a ward-heeler in the Mayor’s party, and the Mayor is ex officio on the Police Commission. Can I?”

“You could put him on a desk, or issue him blanks.”

“Yeah. You’re a fast talker, Archer, but you needn’t get your back up. Maude Slocum told me about you.”

“How much?”

“Enough. The less said about that the better. Right?” His mind was quick and cold, out of place in his big, full-blooded body. I could almost see it turning a leaf and writing a new heading at the top of a clean page. “So far as she knew, you were the last one to talk to the old lady before she died. Exactly when did you see her?”

“Just before sunset. That would be a few minutes after seven.”

“A couple of minutes before. It’s earlier here on account of the mountains. You talked to her in the garden, I believe? If you’ll tell me now exactly what was said—” He went to the door and called his shorthand writer, who took his position at the kitchen table. I told him what was said.

“Nothing much there, eh?” He sounded disappointed. “No sign of suicidal impulse? Or illness? She had a pretty bad heart, the doctor says.”

“Nothing that I could put my finger on. She seemed a little screwy to me, but nearly everyone does. What’s the physical evidence?”

“Everything external points to drowning. That’s the presumption, anyway, when you find a corpse in water—though how the hell she got there I can’t say. About the body, we’ll know more tomorrow. The Coroner’s ordering an autopsy and an inquest.”

“What’s the assumption in the meantime? Fell, or got pushed?”

“Fell, but I’m handling it as homicide until I know for sure. Old ladies do fall into swimming-pools, I guess.”

“She wasn’t old.”

“I know. And there’s no good reason why she should go near the pool, let alone into it. She never used it. It was built for her husband’s arthritis years ago. She was forbidden the water, on account of her heart, and she was afraid of it, anyway.”

“Not without reason.”

“No.” His thick, square-nailed fingers drummed on the hard tabletop. “I tried a reconstruction from the condition of the lawn around the pool. The trouble was, when Marvell yelled for help, everybody came running. They trampled out any traces there might have been.”

“One thing, if it’s murder, you’ll have most of your suspects accounted for. The people at the party.”

“It’s not that simple.” To the man with the notebook he said: “Don’t bother with this,” and turned back to me: “They had a buffet lunch in the dining-room, and at the time it happened the guests were moving in and out. Even Marvell could have pushed her in, then fished her out himself.”

“Why pick on Marvell?”

“Figure it out. He wants money to take his play east. He’s very close to Slocum. Now Slocum has money.”

“You’re skipping Slocum, aren’t you?”

His face twisted sourly. “James is a mother’s boy. He wouldn’t touch a hair of his mother’s head.”

“And Maude Slocum?”

“I’m skipping her, too.” His mind flicked another page, and started a new heading: “Assuming she was murdered, there’s a possibility it was an outside job. A woman like that makes a lot of enemies.”

“Like Pareco,” I said.

He grunted: “Huh?”

“The Pacific Refining Company.”

“Oh. Yeah. Only the oil companies don’t go in for murder any more. Not for a little matter like an oil lease. I meant to ask you, you didn’t see any strangers around the place?”

This was the question I’d been waiting for, and wondering how to answer. Reavis was the logical suspect: on the spot, drunk, and with a grievance. The only trouble was that when I picked him up, he hadn’t looked or talked or acted like a man who had just committed a crime. And the timing was wrong. But if the police were looking for a quick and easy out, they could probably send him to the gas chamber on circumstantial evidence. I’d seen it happen before, in the L.A. jungle, and I had to be sure about the Nopal Valley police. I decided that Knudson could be trusted, but I kept one card face down. I didn’t tell him that when I picked Reavis up a mile or more from the house, it was exactly 8:23 by my dashboard clock and my wrist watch. It was Reavis who had called attention to the time, and that could mean that Reavis was trying to use me for a phony alibi. I hated to be used.

Knudson didn’t like the delay, but he kept his temper. “All right. So you gave this boy a lift from outside the gate sometime after eight. You realize we don’t know when she was killed, and probably never will know. Marvell’s evidence is inconclusive. In his first account he didn’t even mention the splash he heard, or thinks he heard. Did Reavis have murder on his mind?”

“Not unless he enjoys it. He was in a good mood.”

“What sort of a boy is he? I’ve seen him around, but never talked to him.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him a pre-frontal lobotomy wouldn’t fix. He’d steal his widowed mother’s rent-money to play the ponies, but I don’t see him pushing her into the water. Psychopath, maybe, but not extreme. He takes it out in talking.”

He leaned toward me, as wide as the tabletop. “You like the boy? Is that why you let him slip away from Franks?”

“I lose my well-oiled precision when a slug just misses my kidneys. I don’t like Reavis at all, but some people do.” I pitched him a curve, low, on the outside: “Cathy Slocum likes him pretty well.”

His face swelled up with blood, and he leaned closer. “You’re a liar. Cathy doesn’t mess with trash like that.”

“Take it easy, Knudson.” I stood up. “Ask her father about it, if you like.”

The life went out of his face and left it stupid. “What goes on here?” he said to himself. Then he remembered me, and the shorthand man.

He took the notebook out of the man’s hands, and ripped out the last page of pencilled shorthand. “All right, Eddie, take a rest.” And to me: “What are you going to do? Help us find Reavis?”

“I’ll talk to Mrs. Slocum.”

“Do that. She’s in the front sitting-room with her husband. It’s across the hall from the living-room.”

I said: “I’m not a liar.”

“What?” He stood up slowly. He was no taller than I was, but he was wide and powerful. His thick body dominated the room even though the mind behind his pale blue eyes was turned elsewhere.

“I’m not a liar,” I said.

The eyes focused on me, cold with hostility. “All right,” he said after a time. “You’re not a liar.” He sat down at the table again, with his shoulders slumped like a padded coat on an inadequate hanger.