The Barbarous Coast (7 page)

“I’m not going back to the hotel. You can’t force me.”

“All right, all right. If you promise to stay in the car. I have a lead that may pan out and it may not. It won’t for sure, if you come barging in.”

“I won’t. I promise.” After a while he said: “You don’t understand how I feel. I dreamed of Hester just now when I was asleep. I tried to talk to her. She wouldn’t answer, and then I saw she was dead. I touched her. She was as cold as snow—”

“Tell it to your head-shrinker,” I said unpleasantly. His self-pity was getting on my nerves.

He withdrew into hurt silence, which lasted all the way to the Canyon. Lance Leonard lived near the summit, in a raw new redwood house suspended on cantilevers over a steep drop. I parked above the house and looked around. Leonard had no close neighbors, though several other houses dotted the further slopes. The hills fell away from the ridge in folds like heavy drapery trailing in the horizontal sea.

I nailed George in place with one of my masterful looks, and went down the slanting asphalt drive to the house. The trees in the front yard, lemons and avocados, were recently planted: I could see the yellow burlap around their roots. The open garage contained a dusty gray Jaguar two-door and a light racing motorcycle. I pressed the button beside the front door, and heard chimes in the house softly dividing the silence.

A young man opened the door. He was combing his hair with a sequined comb. His hair was black, curly on top and straight at the sides. The height of the doorstep brought his head level with mine. His face was darkly handsome, if you overlooked the spoiled mouth and slightly muddy eyes. He had on blue nylon pajamas, and his brown feet were bare. He was the central diver in Bassett’s photograph.

“Mr. Torres?”

“Leonard,” he corrected me. Having arranged the curls low on his forehead to his satisfaction, he dropped the comb in his pajama pocket. He smiled with conscious charm. “Got a new name to go with my new career. What’s the mission, cap?”

“I’d like to see Mrs. Wall.”

“Never heard of her. You got the wrong address.”

“Her maiden name was Campbell. Hester Campbell.”

He stiffened. “Hester? She ain’t married—isn’t married.”

“She’s married. Didn’t she tell you?”

He glanced over his shoulder into the house, and back at me. His movements were lizard-quick. He took hold of the knob and started to shut the door. “Never heard of her. Sorry.”

“Who does the comb belong to? Or do you merely adore bright things?”

He paused in indecision, long enough for me to get my foot in the door. I could see past him through the house to the sliding glass wall at the rear of the living-space, and
through it the outside terrace which overhung the canyon. A girl was lying on a metal chaise in the sun. Her back was brown and long, with a breathtaking narrow waist from which the white hip arched up. Her hair was like ruffled silver feathers.

Leonard stepped outside, forcing me back onto the flagstone walk, and shut the front door behind him. “Drag ’em back into their sockets, cousin. No free shows today. And get this, I don’t know any Hester what’s-her-name.”

“You did a minute ago.”

“Maybe I heard the name once. I hear a lot of names. What’s yours, for instance?”

“Archer.”

“What’s your business?”

“I’m a detective.”

His mouth went ugly, and his eyes blank. He’d come up fast out of a place where cops were hated and feared: the hatred was still in him like a chronic disease. “What you want with me, cop?”

“Not you. Hester.”

“Is she in a jam?”

“She probably is if she’s shacked up with you.”

“Naw, naw. She gave me the brush-off, frankly.” He brushed his nylon flanks illustratively. “I haven’t seen the chick for a long time.”

“Have you tried looking on your terrace?”

His hands paused and tightened on his hips. He leaned forward from the waist, his mouth working like a red bivalve: “You keep calling me a liar. I got a public position to keep up, so I stand here and take it like a little gentleman. But you better get off my property or I’ll clobber you, cop or no cop.”

“That would go good in the columns. The whole set-up would.”

“What set-up? What do you mean?”

“You tell me.”

He squinted anxiously up toward the road where my car was parked. George’s face hung at the window like an ominous pink moon.

“Who’s your sidekick?”

“Her husband.”

Leonard’s eyes blurred with thought. “What is this, a shakedown? Let’s see your buzzer.”

“No buzzer. I’m a private detective.”

“Dig him,” he said to an imaginary confidant on his left.

At the same time, his right shoulder dropped. The hooked arm swinging from it drove a fist into my middle below the rib-cage. It came too fast to block. I sat down on the flagstones and discovered that I couldn’t get up right away. My head was cool and clear, like an aquarium, but the bright ideas and noble intentions that swam around in it had no useful connection with my legs.

Leonard stood with his fists ready, waiting for me to get up. His hair had fallen forward over his eyes, blue-black and shining like steel shavings. His bare feet danced a little on the stone. I reached for them and clutched air. Leonard smiled down at me, dancing:

“Come on, get up. I can use a workout.”

“You’ll get it, sucker-puncher,” I said between difficult breaths.

“Not from you, old man.”

The door opened behind him, and featherhead looked out. She wore dark harlequin glasses whose sequined rims matched the comb. Oil glistened on her face. A terrycloth towel held under her armpits clung to the bulbs and narrows of her body.

“What’s the trouble, hon?”

“No trouble. Get inside.”

“Who is this character? Did you hit him?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re crazy, taking the chances you take.”

“Me
take chances? Who shot off her mouth on the telephone? You
brought
the bastard here.”

“All right, so I wanted out. So I changed my mind.”

“Shut it off.” He threatened her with a movement of his shoulders. “I said inside.”

Running footsteps clattered on the driveway. George Wall called out: “Hester! I’m here!”

What I could see of her face didn’t change expression. Leonard spread a hand on her terrycloth breast and pushed her in and shut the door on her. He turned as George charged in on him, met him with a stiff left to the face. George stopped dead. Leonard waited, his face smooth and intent like a man’s listening to music.

I got my legs under me and stood up and watched them fight. George had been wanting a fight: he had the advantage of height and weight and reach: I didn’t interfere. It was like watching a man get caught in a machine. Leonard stepped inside of a looping swing, rested his chin on the big man’s chest, and hammered his stomach. His elbows worked like pistons in oiled grooves close to his body. When he stepped back, George doubled over. He went to his knees and got up again, very pale.

The instant his hands left the flagstone, Leonard brought up his right hand into George’s face, his back uncoiling behind it. George walked backward onto the tender new lawn. He looked at the sky in a disappointed way, as if it had dropped something on him. Then he shook his head and started back toward Leonard. He tripped on a garden hose and almost fell.

I stepped between them, facing Leonard. “He’s had it. Knock it off, eh?”

George shouldered me aside. I grabbed his arms.

“Let me at the little runt,” he said through bloody lips.

“You don’t want to get hurt, boy.”

“Worry about him.”

He was stronger than I was. He broke loose and spun me away. Threw another wild one which split the back of his suit coat and accomplished nothing else. Leonard inclined his head two or three inches from the vertical and watched the fist go by. George staggered off balance. Leonard hit him between the eyes with his right hand, hit him again with his left as he went down. George’s head made a dull noise on the flagstone. He lay still.

Leonard polished the knuckles of his right fist with his left hand, as though it were a bronze object of art.

“You shouldn’t use it on amateurs.”

He answered reasonably: “I don’t unless I have to. Only sometimes I get damn browned off, big slobs thinkin’ they can push me around. I been pushed around plenty, I don’t have to take it no more.” He balanced himself on one foot and touched George’s outflung arm with the tip of his big toe. “Maybe you better take him to a doctor.”

“Maybe I better.”

“I hit him pretty hard.”

He showed me the knuckles of his right hand. They were swelling and turning blue. Otherwise, the fight had done him good. He was cheerful and relaxed, and he pranced a little when he moved, like a stallion. Featherhead was watching him from the window. She had on a linen dress now. She saw me looking at her, and moved back out of sight.

Leonard turned on the hose and ran cold water over George’s head. George opened his eyes and tried to sit up. Leonard turned off the hose.

“He’ll be all right. They don’t come out of it that fast when they’re bad hurt. Anyway, I hit him in self-defense, you’re a witness to that. If there’s any beef about it, you can take it up with Leroy Frost at Helio.”

“Leroy Frost is your fixer, eh?”

He gave me a faintly anxious smile. “You know Leroy?”

“A little.”

“Maybe we won’t bother him about it, eh? Leroy, he’s got a lot of troubles. How much you make in a day?”

“Fifty when I’m working.”

“Okay, how’s about I slip you fifty and you take care of the carcass?” He turned on all his neon charm. “Incidently, I should apologize. I kind of lost my head there for a minute, I shouldn’t ought to of took the sucker punch on you. You can pay me back some time.”

“Maybe I will, at that.”

“Sure you will, and I’ll let you. How’s the breadbasket, cap?”

“Feels like a broken tennis racquet.”

“But no hard feelings, eh?”

“No hard feelings.”

“Swell, swell.”

He offered me his hand. I set myself on my heels and hit him in the jaw. It wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do. My legs were middle-aging, and still wobbly. If I missed the nerve, he could run circles around me and cut me to ribbons with his left alone. But the connection was good.

I left him lying. The front door was unlocked, and I went in. The girl wasn’t in the living-room or on the terrace. Her terrycloth towel was crumpled on the bedroom floor. A sun-hat woven of plaited straw lay on the floor beside it. The leather band inside the hat was stamped with the legend: “Handmade in Mexico for the Taos Shop.”

A motor coughed and roared behind the wall. I found the side door which opened from the utility room into the garage. She was at the wheel of the Jaguar, looking at me with her mouth wide open. She locked the door on her side before I got hold of the handle. Then it was torn from my fist.

The Jaguar screeched in the turnaround, laying down black spoor, and leaped up the driveway to the road. I let it go. I couldn’t leave George with Leonard.

They were sitting up in front of the house, exchanging dim looks of hatred across the flagstone walk. George was bleeding from the mouth. The flesh around one of his eyes was changing color. Leonard was unmarked, but I saw when he got to his feet that there was a change in him.

He had a hangdog air, a little furtive, as if I’d jarred him back into his past. He kept running his fingers over his nose and mouth.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “you’re still gorgeous.”

“Funny boy. You think it’s funny? I kill you, it wasn’t for this.” He displayed his swollen right hand.

“You offered me a sucker punch, remember. Now we’re even. Where did she go?”

“You
can go to hell.”

“What’s her address?”

“Go to hell.”

“You might as well give me her address. I got her license number. I can trace her.”

“Go right ahead.” He gave me a superior look, which probably meant that the Jaguar was his.

“What did she change her mind about? Why did she want out?”

“I can’t read minds. I dunno nothin’ about her. I service plenty of women, see? They ask me for it, I give ’em a bang sometimes. Does that mean I’m responsible?”

I reached for him. He backed away, his face sallow and pinched. “Keep your hands off of me. And drag your butt off of my property. I’m warning you, I got a loaded shotgun in the house.”

He went as far as the door, and turned to watch us. George was on his hands and knees now. I got one of his arms
draped over my shoulders and heaved him up to his feet. He walked like a man trying to balance himself on a spring mattress.

When I turned for a last look at the house, Leonard was on the doorstep, combing his hair.

I
DROVE
down the long grade to Beverly Hills, slowly, because I was feeling accident-prone. There were days when you could put your finger on the point of stress and everything fell into rational patterns around you. And there were the other days.

George bothered me. He sat hunched over with his head in his hands, groaning from time to time. He had a fine instinct, even better than mine, for pushing his face in at the wrong door and getting it bloodied. He needed a keeper: I seemed to be elected.

I took him to my own doctor, a G.P. named Wolfson who had his office on Santa Monica Boulevard. Wolfson laid him out on a padded metal table in a cubicle, went over his face and skull with thick, deft fingers, flashed a small light in his eyes, and performed other rituals.

“How did it happen?”

“He fell down and hit his head on a flagstone walk.”

“Who pushed him? You?”

“A mutual friend. We won’t go into that. Is he all right?”

“Might be a slight concussion. You ever hurt your head before?”

“Playing football, I have,” George said.

“Hurt it bad?”

“I suppose so. I’ve blacked out a couple of times.”

“I don’t like it,” Wolfson said to me. “You ought to take him to the hospital. He should spend a couple of days in bed, at least.”