The Way Some People Die

Chapter 14

I went up the looping road in second and stopped at the green iron gate. The sentry was already out of the gatehouse with the shotgun. The sun burned on the oiled and polished barrels.

“How’s the hunting?” I asked him.

He had a bulldog face whose only expression was a frozen ferocity intended to scare off trespassers. “You better beat it. This is private property.”

“Dowser is expecting me. I’m Archer.”

“You stay in your car and I’ll check.” He retired to the gatehouse, from which a telephone wire ran to the main building. When he came out he opened the gate for me. “You can park over here by the fence.”

He moved up close to me as I got out of the car. I stood still and let his hands run down me. They paused at my empty holster. “Where’s the gun?”

“I ditched it.”

“Trouble?”

“Trouble.”

Blaney met me at the front door, still wearing the wide black hat. “I didn’t expect you back.”

I took a long look at the mushroom-colored face, the ground glass eyes. They told me nothing. If Blaney had shot Dalling he’d done it without a second thought.

“I can’t resist your charming hospitality,” I said. “Where’s the boss?”

“Eating lunch on the patio. You’re to come on out, he says.”

Dowser was sitting alone at a wrought-iron table by the swimming pool, a crabmeat salad with mayonnaise in front of him. His short hair was wet, and he was wrapped to the chin in a white terrycloth robe. With his bulging eyes and munching jaws he looked like an overgrown gopher masquerading as a man.

He went on eating for a while, to remind me of his importance in the world. He ate pieces of crabmeat and lettuce with his fingers, and then he licked his fingers. Blaney stood and watched him like an envious ghost. I looked around at the oval pool still stirred and winking with the memory of Dowser’s bathe, the spectrum of flowers that fringed the patio, all the fine things that Dowser had pushed and cheated and killed for. And I wondered what I could do to take them away from Dowser.

He pushed the demolished salad away and lit a cigarette. “You can go in, Blaney.” The thin man vanished from my side.

“Did you get my special delivery?”

“Come again. Sit down if you want to.”

I took a chair across the table from him. “I flushed the girl for you. Tarantine was too quick for me, or I’d have brought him in too.”

“You flushed her! We had to find her ourselves. Some dame called in this morning that she was at her old lady’s. That wasn’t you on the phone, was it, doing a female impersonation?”

“I don’t have the figure for it,” I said, looking him up and down.

“So where do you come in?”

“I brought her from Palm Springs for you. You said it was worth a thousand.”

“The way I understand it, she came by herself. I pay for value received.”

“You’ve got her, haven’t you? You wouldn’t have her if I hadn’t sent her home to mother. I talked her into it.”

“That’s not her story.”

“What is her story?”

“She isn’t talking much.” He looked uncomfortable, and changed the subject: “Did you see Tarantine?”

“I didn’t see him. He sapped me from behind. The girl tried to stop it, I think. There’s a possibility she isn’t in this with him. Whatever this is.”

He laughed his unenjoyable laugh. “You’d like to know, huh?”

“When I get beaten over the head, I’m interested in the reason.”

“I’ll tell you the reason. Tarantine has something of mine, you maybe guessed it, huh? I’m going to get it back. The girl says she don’t know nothing about it.”

“What does it look like?”

“That doesn’t matter. He won’t be toting it around with him. When I get him, then I get it afterwards.”

“Junk,” I said under my breath. If he heard me he paid no attention.

“You working for me, Archer?”

“Not for love.”

“I offered you five grand for Tarantine. I’ll raise it five.”

“You offered me one for Galley. You’re full of offers.” I was watching his face closely, to see how far I could go in that direction.

“Be reasonable,” he said. “You brought her in, I’d of slipped you the cash just like an expressman at the door. You didn’t bring her. Blaney had to go and get her himself. I can’t afford to throw money away on good will. My expenses are a friggin’ crime these days. I got a payroll that would break your heart and now the lawyers tell me I got to pay back income-tax to clear myself with the feds.” His voice was throbbing with the injustice of it all. “Not to mention the politicians,” he added. “The Goddamn politicians bleed me white.”

“Five hundred, then,” I said. “We’ll split the difference.”

“Five hundred dollars for nothing?” But he was just haggling now, trying to convert a bargain to a steal.

“Last night it was a thousand. Only last night you didn’t have the girl.”

“The girl is no good to me. If she knows where Joe Tarantine is, she isn’t telling.”

“Let me talk to her?” Which was the point I had been aiming at from the beginning.

“She’ll talk for me. It takes a little time.” He stood up, tightening the sash around his flabby waist. There was something womanish about the gesture, though the muscles bulged like angry veins in his sleeves.

On his feet he looked smaller. His legs were proportionately shorter than his body. I stayed in my chair. Dowser would be more likely to do what I wanted him to do if he could look down at the top of my head. There were two-inch heels on the sandals that clasped his feet.

“A little time,” I repeated. “Isn’t that what Tarantine needs to get lost in Mexico? Or wherever he’s gone.”

“I can extradite him,” he said with his canine grin. “All I need to know is where he is.”

“And if she doesn’t know?”

“She knows. She’ll remember. A man don’t leave behind a piece like her. Not Joey. He loves his flesh.”

“Speaking of flesh, what have you been doing to the girl?”

“Nothing much.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Blaney pushed her around a little bit. I guess now I got my strength up I’ll push her around a little bit myself.” He punched himself in the abdomen, not very hard.

“I wish you’d let me talk to her,” I said.

“Why all the eager interest, baby?”

“Tarantine sapped me.”

“He didn’t sap you in the moneybags, baby. That’s where you get the real agony.”

“No doubt. But here’s my idea. The girl has a notion I might be on her side.” If Galley had that notion, she was right. “If you muss my hair and shove me in alongside her, it should convince her. I suppose you’ve got her locked in some dungeon?”

“You want to stool for me, is that the pitch?”

“Call it that. When do I get my five hundred?”

He dug deep into the pocket of his robe, slipped a bill from the gold money-clip and tossed it on the table. “There’s your money.”

I rose and picked it up against my will, telling myself it was justified under the circumstances. Taking his money was the only way I knew to make Dowser trust me. I folded the bill and tucked it into the watch pocket, separate from the other money, promising myself that at the earliest opportunity I’d bet it on the horses.

“It might be a good idea,” he said. “You have a talk with the girl before we rough her up too much. I kind of like her looks the way she is. Maybe you do too, huh?” The bulging eyes shone with a lewd cunning.

“She’s a lovely piece,” I said.

“Well, don’t start getting any ideas. I’ll put you in where she is, see, and all you do is talk to her. Along the lines we discussed. I got a mike in there, and a one-way window. I put the one-way window in for the politicians. They come to visit me sometimes, see. I take my own sex straight.”

So does a coyote, I thought, and did not say.