The Way Some People Die

Chapter 28

There were clouds in the hills along the skyline route, obscuring the winding road and spraying my windshield with fine droplets of water. I used my yellow foglights and kept the wipers metron-oming, but it was a long slow drive. Between the San Francisco limits and the bay, we passed no lighted houses and few cars. The city with all its lights had sunk behind us as if it had never existed.

The man beside me was quiet. Occasionally he uttered a little moan. Once he said: “He’ll kill me. Speed will kill me.”

“Small loss if he did,” I said to cheer him up.

“He’ll kill you too!” he cried. “I hope he does kill you.”

“Naturally. Is he alone?”

“Far as I know he is.”

“You’ll go up to the door. You’ll do the talking.”

“I can’t. I’m sick. You hurt me.”

“Buck up. I hate a whiner.”

He was quiet again, though he still moaned occasionally to himself. We crept on under the smothering gray sky, through the gray cloud-drowned hills. The sun and the other stars had burned out long ago, and Mosquito and I were journeying for our sins through a purgatory of gray space.

Eventually the road dipped below the cloudline. Below it to the right, a flat gray arm of the sea meandered among the hills like a slow river. The opposite bank was black with trees. I followed the shore for miles, losing it and coming back to it again as the road determined. In a narrow valley close by the forsaken shore, the road branched left and right.

I stopped the car. “Which way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do, Mosquito. Bear this in mind: you’ll take your chance with Speed, or have the certainty of a Federal pen. Now which is it going to be? Which way?”

“To the right,” he answered drearily. “It’s only about a mile from here.”

We crossed a long low bridge and followed a gravel road up the opposite bank of the bay. After a while we passed a dirt road that straggled downward towards the landlocked water. “That’s it,” he said.

I braked and backed, turning into the rutted lane. “How far down is it?”

“Just around the curve.”

I cut my lights, stopped short of the curve and set my emergency brake. “Get out and walk ahead of me. If you give him warning, I’ll drop you.”

“Speed will kill me,” he said slowly and distinctly, as if he was stating a theory I had failed to understand. In the dim light from the dashboard, I could see the water shining in his eyes. I took my flashlight out of the glove compartment, and tested it on his face. It looked sick.

“Get out.” I leaned across him to open the door, and crowded out behind him. I closed the windows and locked both doors.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “afraid of the dark. I never been out here at night.”

“You’ll never go back if you keep this up. Now walk ahead of me.”

He was clinging to the door handle. I pushed him upright with the revolver muzzle, and prodded him into the road. He lurched ahead of me.

Below the curve the lane broadened into a small clearing. A cabin of rough-hewn logs sat in the clearing, one square lit window facing us. A man’s shadow moved there, growing until it covered the whole window. Then the light died behind it. There was a long dark car parked beside the cabin.

“Call him,” I said to the man at the end of my gun. The flashlight was in my left hand.

His first attempt was a dry gasp. “Keep moving and call him. Tell him who you are. Tell him that I’m a friend.”

“Mr. Speed,” he cried thinly. “It’s Mosquito.”

We were halfway across the clearing. “Louder,” I said in his ear, and jabbed him in the kidneys with the muzzle.

“Mr. Speed.” His voice cracked.

I pushed him on ahead of me. The door opened inward as Mosquito set his feet on the plank stoop.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice said from the deep inside shadow.

“Mosquito.”

“What do you want? Who’s with you?”

“A friend.”

“What friend?” The hidden voice rose in pitch.

I’d got as far as I could with that approach. Even with tear gas, tommy-guns and a police cordon, there is no way to take a desperate man without risking your life. I had an advantage over Speed, of course. I knew that he was still convalescing from Blaney’s bullet, and was probably gun-shy.

I stepped around Mosquito. “The name is Archer. A Mrs. Henry Fellows” – I pronounced the name carefully – "hired me to look for you.”

Before I finished speaking, I pressed my flashlight button. The white beam fanned the doorway. Speed crouched there, a massive figure with a black gun in his hand. We faced each other for a long tense instant. Either of us could have shot the other. I was so sharply aware of him, I felt his gun wound burning a hole in my own belly.

The starch went out of him suddenly. Without seeming to move, he shifted from the offensive to the defensive. “What do you want?” His pale bright eyes looked down at his gun, as if it was the gun that had somehow failed him.

“You might as well drop it,” I said. “I have you covered.”

He flung it down in a gesture of self-disgust. It skittered across the rough planks toward me. Instinctively, Mosquito moved to retrieve it. I set my foot on the gun and elbowed him back.

“Go away, Mosquito,” I said, watching Speed. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“Where should I go?” He sounded both hurt and unbelieving.

“Anywhere but San Francisco. Start walking.”

“All by myself? Out here?”

“Start walking.”

He stepped off the porch into gray gloom. I didn’t waste a backward glance on him. “We’ll go into the house,” I said to Speed. “You better hold your hands on top of your head.”

“You’re exceedingly masterful.” He was recovering his style, or whatever it was that kept him upright and made him interesting to women. On the shooting level he was a bum, as useless as a cat in a dogfight. But he had his own feline dignity, even with his hands up.

I picked up his gun, a light automatic with the safety still on, and juggled it into my pocket, holding the flash under my arm. “About face, colonel. No false moves, unless you want a hole in the back to match the one in the front.”

He turned in the doorway. I stayed close behind him as he crossed the room and relit the oil lamp. The flame steadied and brightened, casting a widening circle of light across the bare floor and up into the rafters. The room contained a built-in bunk, a cheap pine table, two kitchen chairs and a canvas deck-chair placed by the stone fireplace. A pair of new leather suitcases stood unopened at the end of the bunk. There was no fire in the fireplace, and the room was cold.

“Sit down.” I waved my gun at the deck-chair.

“You’re very kind.” He sprawled in the chair with his long legs spraddled in front of him. “Is it necessary for me to retain the hands-on-head position? It makes me feel ridiculous.”

“You can relax.” I sat down facing him in one of the kitchen chairs.

“Thank you.” He lowered his hands and clasped them in his lap, but he didn’t relax. His entire body was taut. The attempt he made to smile was miserable, and he abandoned it. He raised one hand to shield his worried mouth.

The hand stayed there of its own accord, brushing back and forth across his thin brown eyebrow of mustache. Its fingernails were bitten down to the quick. “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

“We’ve seen each other. This a comedown after the Oasis Inn.”

“It is, rather. Are you a detective?” I nodded.

“I’m surprised at Marjorie.” But he showed no emotion of any kind. His face was unfocused, sagging wearily on its hones. Deep lines dragged from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His fingers began to explore them. “I didn’t think I she would go to such lengths.”

“You hurt her feelings,” I said. “It’s never a good idea to hurt a woman’s feelings. If you have to rob them, you should try to do it without hurting their feelings.”

“Rob is a pretty strong word to use. She gave me the money to invest for her. She’ll get it back, I promise you.”

“And your word is as good as your bond, eh? How good is your bond?”

“One week,” he said. “Give me one week. I’ll pay it back with interest gladly.”

“How about now?”

“That’s impossible. I don’t have the money now. It’s already invested.”

“In real estate?”

“In real estate, yes.” The pale eyes flickered. The exploring hand climbed up to them and masked them for a moment.

“Don’t rack your brain for a story, Speed. I know where the money went.”

He peered at me, still hiding behind his fingers. “I suppose Mosquito told you?”

“Mosquito told me nothing.”

“She tapped my phone at the Inn, then. The sweet sow.” The hand slid down his face to his throat, where it pinched the loose skin between thumb and forefinger. “Oh, the sweet sow.” But he couldn’t work up any anger. The things that had been done to him looked worse and more important than the things he could do in return. He was sick of himself. “Well, what do you want with me? I guarantee she’ll have her money back in a week.”

“You can’t see over the edge of the next five minutes, and you’re talking about a week. In a week you may be dead.”

A half-smile deepened the lines on one side of his face. “I may at that. And you may too. I certainly wish it for you.”

“Who did you pay the money to?”

“Joe Tarantine. I wouldn’t try to get it back from him if I were you.”

“Where is he?”

He lifted his broad shoulders, and dropped them. “I don’t know, and I haven’t any desire to. Joe isn’t one of my bosom pals, exactly.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Two nights ago,” he said, after some reflection.

“When you bought the heroin from him?”

“You seem to know my business better than I do.” He leaned toward me, drawing his legs back. I moved the revolver to remind him of it.

“Put the gun away, please. What did you say your name was?”

“Archer.” I kept the gun where it was, supported on my knee.

“How much is Marjorie paying you, Archer?”

“Enough.”

“Whatever it is, I could pay you much better. If you’ll give me a little leeway. A little time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I have two kilos of pure heroin. Do you know how much that’s worth on the present market?”

“I haven’t been following the quotations. Fill me in.”

“A clean hundred thousand, if I have the time to make the necessary contacts. A hundred thousand, over and above my debt to the sweet sow.” For the first time, he was showing a little animation. “I’m not even suggesting you double-cross her. All I ask is time. Four days should do it.”

“While I sit holding a gun on you?”

“You can put it away.”

“I think you’re trying to con me the way you conned Marjorie. For all I know, you have the money on you.”

He compressed the flesh around his eyes, trying to force them into an expression of earnest sincerity. Surrounded by puckered skin, they stayed pale and cold and shallow. “You’re quite mistaken, old man.” I’d wondered where Mosquito got the phrase. “You can take a look at my wallet if you like.” His hand moved toward the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Keep your hands in sight. What about your suitcases?”

“Go right ahead and search them. They’re not locked.” Which probably meant there was nothing important in the suitcases.

He turned his head to look at the expensive luggage, and revealed a different face. Full-face, he looked enough like a gentleman to pass for one in southern California: his face was oval and soft, almost gentle around the mouth, with light hair waving back from a wide sunburned forehead. In profile, his saddle nose and lantern jaw gave him the look of an aging roughneck; the slack skin twisted into diagonal folds under his chin.

He had fooled me in a way: I hadn’t been able to reach in behind the near-gentlemanly front. My acceptance of the front had even built it up for Speed a little. He was more at ease than he had been, in spite of the gun on my knee.

I spoke to the ravaged old man behind the front: “You’re on your last legs, Speed. I guess you know that.”

His head turned back to me, losing ten years. He said nothing, but there was a kind of questioning assent in the eyes.

“You can’t buy me,” I said. “The way things stand, you can’t angle out of this rap. You’ve made your big try for a comeback, and it’s failed.”

“What is this leading up to? Or do you simply enjoy hearing yourself make speeches?”

“I have to take you back with me. There’s the matter of Marjorie’s money, for one thing–”

“She’ll never get it if you take me back, not a red cent of it.”

“Then she’ll have the satisfaction of failing you. She’s in the mood to push it to the limit. Not to mention what the police will do. They’ll have a lot of questions to ask you about this and that, particularly Dalling’s murder.”

“Dalling’s murder?” His face thinned and turned sallow. “Who is Dalling?” But he knew who Dalling was, and knew I knew he knew.

“If they ever let you out, Dowser and Blaney will be waiting for you.” I piled it on. “Last time they had no special grudge against you. All they wanted was your territory. This time they’ll cut you to pieces, and you know it. I wouldn’t insure your life for a dime if you paid me a hundred-dollar premium.”

“You’re one of Dowser’s troopers.” He looked at my gun and couldn’t look away. I raised it so he could see the round hole in the barrel, the peephole into darkness.

“How about it, Speed? Do you come south with me, or settle with me here?”

“Settle?” he said, still with his eyes on the gun.

“I’m going back with you or the heroin, one or the other.”

“To Dowser?”

“You’re a good guesser. If Danny gets his shipment back, he won’t care so much about you.”

He said, with an effort: “I’ll split with you. We can clear a hundred thousand between us. Fifty thousand for you. I have a contact in the east, he’s flying out tomorrow.” The effort left him breathless.

“You can’t buy me,” I repeated. “Hand it over.”

“If I do, what happens to me?”

“It’s up to you. Climb into your car and drive as fast as you can as far as you can. Or walk due west until you hit the ocean and keep on walking.”

He raised his eyes to mine. His face was old and sick. “I should have shot you when I had the chance.”

“You should have, but you didn’t. You’re washed up, as I said.”

“Yes,” he said to himself. “I am washed up.” His voice was almost cheerful, in a wry thin way. I got the impression that he had never really expected to succeed, and was taking a bitter satisfaction from his own foresight.

“You’re wasting my time. Where is it?”

“I’ll give you a straight answer to that if you’ll give me a straight answer to this. Who tipped my hand to you? I don’t expect to do anything about it. I’d simply like to know.”

“Nobody did.”

“Nobody?”

“I put together a couple of hunches and a lot of legwork, and worked it out for myself. You won’t believe that, naturally.”

“Oh, I believe it. Anyway, what difference does it make?” He shook his head fretfully, bored by the answer to his own question. “The lousy stuff is in a tobacco can in the kitchen cupboard.”

I found it there.