The Barbarous Coast (22 page)

He turned on his heel and walked away. I said after him:

“Can I drop you someplace?”

“I have my own car.”

I
SHOULD
have handled it better. I walked to the end of the pool, the last man at the party, feeling that early-morning ebb of heart when the blood runs sluggish and cold. The fog had begun to blow out to sea. It foamed and poured in a slow cataract toward the obscure west. Black-marble patches of ocean showed through here and there.

I must have seen it and known what it was before I was conscious of it. It was a piece of black driftwood with a twist of root at one end, floating low in the water near the shore. It rode in slowly and discontinuously, pushed by a series of breaking waves. Its branches were very flexible for a log. A wave lodged it on the wet brown sand. It was a man in a dark, belted raincoat, lying face-down.

The gate in the fence was padlocked. I picked up a
DO NOT RUN
sign with a heavy concrete base and swung it at the padlock. The gate burst open. I went down the concrete
steps and turned Carl Stern over onto his back. His forehead was deeply ridged where it had struck or been struck by a hard object. The wound in his throat gaped like a toothless mouth shouting silently.

I went to my car, remembering from my bottom-scratching days that there was a southward current along this shore, about a mile an hour. Just under three miles north of the Channel Club, a paved view-point for sightseers blistered out from the highway to the fenced edge of a bluff which overhung the sea. Stern’s rented sedan was parked with its heavy chrome front against the cable fence. Blood spotted the windshield and dashboard and the front seat. Blood stained the blade of the knife which lay on the floor-mat. It looked like Stern’s own knife.

I didn’t mess with any of it. I wanted no part of Stern’s death. I drove home on automatic pilot and went to bed. I dreamed about a man who lived by himself in a landscape of crumbling stones. He spent a great deal of his time, without much success, trying to reconstruct in his mind the monuments and the buildings of which the scattered stones were the only vestiges. He vaguely remembered some kind of oral tradition to the effect that a city had stood there once. And a still vaguer tradition: or perhaps it was a dream inside of the dream: that the people who had built the city, or their descendants, were coming back eventually to rebuild it. He wanted to be around when the work was done.

M
Y
answering service woke me at seven thirty. “Rise and shine, Mr. Archer!”

“Do I have to shine? I’m feeling kind of dim. I got to bed about an hour ago.”

“I haven’t been to bed yet. And, after all, you could have canceled your standing order.”

“I hereby cancel it, forever.” I was in one of those drained and chancy moods when everything seems either laughable or weepworthy, depending on the position you hold your head in. “Now hang the hell up and let me get back to sleep. This is cruel and unusual punishment.”

“My, but we’re in splendid spirits this morning!” Her secretarial instinct took over: “Wait now, don’t hang up. Couple of long-distance calls for you, both from Las Vegas. First at one forty, young lady, seemed very anxious to talk to you, but wouldn’t leave her name. She said she’d call back, but she never did. Got that? Second at three fifteen, Dr. Anthony Reeves, intern at the Memorial Hospital, said he was calling on behalf of a patient named George Wall, picked up at the airport with head injuries.”

“The Vegas airport?”

“Yes. Does that mean anything to you?”

It meant a surge of relief, followed by the realization that I was going to have to drag myself out to International Airport and crawl aboard a plane. “Make me a reservation, will you, Vera?”

“First plane to Vegas?”

“Right.”

“One other call, yesterday afternoon. Man named Mercero
from the CHP, said the Jag was registered to Lance Leonard. Is that the actor that got himself shot last night?”

“It’s in the morning papers, eh?”

“Probably. I heard it on the radio.”

“What else did you hear?”

“That was all. It was just a flash bulletin.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t the same one. What did you say the name was again?”

“I forget.” She was a jewel among women.

Shortly before ten o’clock I was talking to Dr. Anthony Reeves in his room in the Southern Nevada Hospital. He’d had the night duty on Emergency, and had given George Wall a preliminary examination when George was brought in by the sheriff’s men. They had found him wandering around McCarran Airfield in a confused condition. He had a fractured cheekbone, probably a brain concussion, and perhaps a fractured skull. George had to have absolute quiet for at least a week, and would probably be laid up for a month. He couldn’t see anyone.

It was no use arguing with young Dr. Reeves. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I went in search of a susceptible nurse, and eventually found a plump little redhead in an L.A. General cap who was impressed by an old Special Deputy badge I carried. On the strength of it, she led me to a semi-private room with a
NO VISITORS
sign on the door. George was the only occupant, and he was sleeping. I promised not to wake him.

The window shades were tightly drawn, and there was no light on in the room. It was so dim that I could barely make out George’s white-bandaged head against the pillow. I sat in an armchair between his bed and the empty one, and listened to the susurrus of his breathing. It was slow and steady. After a while I almost went to sleep myself.

I was startled out of it by a cry of pain. I thought at
first it was George, but it was a man on the other side of the wall. He cried loudly again.

George stirred and groaned and sat up, raising both hands to his half-mummified face. He swayed and threatened to fall out of bed. I held him by the shoulders.

“Take it easy, boy.”

“Let me go. Who are you?”

“Archer,” I said. “The indigent’s Florence Nightingale.”

“What happened to me? Why can’t I see?”

“You’ve pulled the bandages down over your eyes. Also, it’s dark in here.”

“Where is here? Jail? Am I in jail?”

“You’re in the hospital. Don’t you remember asking Dr. Reeves to phone me long-distance?”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember. What time is it?”

“It’s Saturday morning, getting along towards noon.”

The information hit him hard. He lay back quietly for a while, then said in a puzzled tone:

“I seem to have lost a day.”

“Relax. You wouldn’t want it back.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“I don’t know what you did. You ask too many questions, George.”

“You’re just letting me down easy, aren’t you?” Embarrassment thickened in his throat like phlegm. “I suppose I made a complete ass of myself.”

“Most of us do from time to time. But hold the thought.”

He groped for the light-switch at the head of the bed, found the cord, and pulled it. Fingering the bandages on his face, he peered at me through narrow slits in them. Below the bandages, his puffed lips were dry and cracking. He said with a kind of awe in his voice:

“That little pug in the pajamas—did he do this to me?”

“Part of it. When did you see him last, George?”

“You ought to know, you were with me. What do you mean, part of it?”

“He had some help.”

“Whose help?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“I remember something.” He sounded childishly uncertain. Physical and moral shock had cut his ego down small. “It must have been just a nightmare. It was like a jumble of old movies running through my head. Only I was in it. A man with a gun was after me. The scene kept changing—it couldn’t have been real.”

“It was real. You got into a hassle with the company guards at Simon Graff’s studio. Does the name Simon Graff mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it does. I was in bed in some wretched little house in Los Angeles, and someone talking on the telephone said that name. I got up and called a taxicab and asked the driver to take me to see Simon Graff.”

“It was me on the telephone, George. In my house.”

“Have I ever been in your house?”

“Yesterday.” His memory seemed to be functioning very conveniently. I didn’t doubt his sincerity, but I was irritated. “You also lifted a wretched little old charcoal-gray suit of mine which cost me one-two-five.”

“Did I? I’m sorry.”

“You’ll be sorrier when you get the bill. But skip it. How did you get from the Graff studio to Vegas? And what have you been doing between then and now?”

The mind behind his blood-suffused eyes groped dully in limbo. “I think I came on a plane. Does that make any sense?”

“As much as anything does. Public or private plane?”

After a long pause, he said: “It must have been private. There were just the two of us, me and another fellow. I think it was the same one who chased me with the gun. He
told me that Hester was in danger and needed my help. I blacked out, or something. Then I was walking down a street with a lot of signs flashing in my eyes. I went into this hotel where she was supposed to be, but she had gone, and the desk clerk wouldn’t tell me where.”

“Which hotel?”

“I’m not sure. The sign was in the shape of a wineglass. Or a martini glass. The Dry Martini? Does that sound possible?”

“There is one in town. When were you there?”

“Some time in the course of the night. I’d lost all track of time. I must have spent the rest of the night looking for her. I saw a number of girls who resembled her, but they always turned out to be someone different. I kept blacking out and coming to in another place. It was awful, with those lights in my eyes and the people milling about. They thought I was drunk. Even the policeman thought I was drunk.”

“Forget it, George. It’s over now.”

“I won’t forget it. Hester is in danger. Isn’t that so?”

“She may be, I don’t know. Forget about her, too, why don’t you? Fall in love with the nurse or something. With your win-and-loss record, you ought to marry a nurse anyway. And, incidentally, you better lie down or the nurse will be reaming both of us.”

Instead of lying down, he sat up straighter, his shoulders arching under the hospital shirt. Between the bandages, his red eyes were fixed on my face. “Something has happened to Hester. You’re trying to keep me from knowing.”

“Don’t be crazy, kid. Relax. You’ve sparked enough trouble.”

He said: “If you won’t help me, I’m getting up and walking out of here now. Somebody has to do something.”

“You wouldn’t get far.”

For answer, he threw off the covers, swung his legs over
the edge of the high bed, reached for the floor with his bare feet, and stood up tottering. Then he fell forward onto his knees, his head swinging loose, slack as a killed buck. I hoisted him back onto the bed. He lay inert, breathing rapidly and lightly.

I pressed the nurse’s signal, and passed her on my way out.

T
HE
D
RY
M
ARTINI
was a small hotel on the edge of the older downtown gambling district. Two old ladies were playing Canasta for money in the boxlike knotty-pine lobby. The desk clerk was a fat man in a rayon jacket. His red face was set in the permanently jovial expression which people expect of fat men.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I have an appointment with Miss Campbell.”

“I’m very much afraid Miss Campbell hasn’t come in yet.”

“What time did she go out?”

He clasped his hands across his belly and twiddled his thumbs. “Let’s see, I came on at midnight, she checked in about an hour after that, stayed long enough to change her dress, and away she went again. Couldn’t’ve been much later than one.”

“You notice things.”

“A sexburger like her I notice.” The tip of his tongue protruded between his teeth, which were a good grade of plastic.

“Was anybody with her, going or coming?”

“Nope. She came and went by herself. You’re a friend of hers, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Know her husband? Big guy with light-reddish hair?”

“I know him.”

“What goes with him? He came in here in the middle of the night looking like the wrath of God. Big welts on his face, blood in his hair, yackety-yacking like a psycho. He had some idea in his head that his wife was in trouble and I was mixed up in it. Claimed I knew where she was. I had a hell of a time getting rid of him.”

I looked at my watch. “She could be in trouble, at that. She’s been gone eleven hours.”

“Think nothing of it. They stay on the town for twenty-four, thirty-six hours at a time, some of them. Maybe she hit a winning streak and’s riding it out. Or maybe she had a date. Somebody must’ve clobbered the husband. He
is
her husband, isn’t he?”

“He is, and several people clobbered him. He has a way of leading with his chin. Right now he’s in the hospital, and I’m trying to find her for him.”

“Private dick?”

I nodded. “Do you have any idea where she went?”

“I can find out, maybe, if it’s important.” He looked me over, estimating the value of my clothes and the contents of my wallet. “It’s going to cost me something.”

“How much?”

“Twenty.” It was a question.

“Hey, I’m not buying you outright.”

“All right, ten,” he said quickly. “It’s better than getting poked in the eye with a carrot.”

He took the bill and waddled into a back room, where I heard him talking on the telephone to somebody named Rudy. He came back looking pleased with himself:

“I called her a taxi last night, was just talking to the
dispatcher. He’s sending over the driver that took the call.”

“How much is he going to cost me?”

“That’s between you and him.”

I waited inside the glass front door, watching the noon traffic. It came from every state in the Union, but most of the license plates belonged to Southern California. This carney town was actually Los Angeles’s most farflung suburb.