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He came to gradually, only the throbbing pains at the back of his head telling him for sure that he was awake. Lines shook and shifted in front of him and refused to be still or join together in any way that he could understand.
He tried to move his body and realized that he was sitting up. When he went to move again he seemed to be falling forward and there was a moment’s shock when he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to push his hands out in front of him and break his fall.
Slowly, it dawned on him that he wasn’t going to fall.
The reason he couldn’t use his hands was that his arms were tied fast at the back of the chair.
Which was why he wasn’t going to fall either.
He didn’t think much of it.
He went back into unconsciousness . . .
Dedication
Quote From Raymond Chandler
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Copyright
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Terry and John—Adam, Gwen, Alun, Dawn and all the rest...
just another little Western.
‘We’re his blood. That’s the hell of it.’ She stared at me in the mirror with deep, distant eyes. ‘I don’t want him to die despising his own blood. It was always wild blood, but it wasn’t always rotten blood.’
Raymond Chandler: THE BIG SLEEP
One
The house on Rincon Hill was different from its neighbors only by being more extravagant. The white balustrade that skirted the garden was more ornamented; the bays at front and side jutted out at sharper angles; the spikes that rose from the roof were taller and more richly patterned; the shrubs were massed together like guards before the door. There were six windows at the front, fifteen at the side and most of them had their shades lowered, their shutters fastened across. The gravel on the drive crunched under Herne’s boots as he strode.
Herne and the house didn’t fit.
He was close to a couple of inches over six foot and he weighed around two hundred pounds. His shoulders were broad and his limbs were muscular. His black hair was long enough to curl up from his collar and was greying at the temples. The collar itself was clean but far from new—green cotton that was fraying and faded. He wore a tan leather vest and tan pants over heeled boots that shone dully over the scuff marks. A Colt .45 hung from his gunbelt, its smooth butt close to his right hip. The curled ends of his fingers almost brushed it as he walked.
The knocker on the door was in the shape of a young black boy with curly hair and a wide grin.
Almost before he d used it the heavy, paneled door swung open and the man standing there was black but he wasn’t grinning. If Herne had expected someone dressed up in a monkey suit, he was mistaken. The man was almost as tall as himself and around the same age, which placed him too close to forty to be comfortable. If his hair had once been curly there was no way of knowing; his head was completely bald. He was wearing a loose fitting white shirt and a pair of black pants that looked like he’d been measured for them.
He looked at Herne as if he’d come to the wrong door.
‘You got business here?’
‘This Major Russell’s place?’
‘Yep.’
‘Then I got business here.’
The black leaned back from the waist and stared at him hard. ‘Who says?’
Herne reached for his back pants pocket and took out a folded envelope and handed it across. He’d decided since it was his first visit to San Francisco in a long time, he’d best not mark it by losing his temper with the hired help. Not yet.
The man read the letter cursorily and pulled his upper lip back over his teeth. He sniffed and gave the letter back. ‘I’ll tell the major you’re here.’
Herne followed him along a hallway of polished wood which opened out onto a circular lobby with doors and a staircase leading off it. There were oil paintings on the walls, most of them military, and tall vases of flowers stood on round rosewood tables. Here the floor was marble.
The black went through one of the doors and closed it behind him.
Herne stood and looked at the bearded figures staring down at him, their expressions unmoving and their medals beginning to fade. It took him a while before he recognized the smell that seemed to pervade the air and finally he realized it was a mixture of polish and must.
‘The major’s in the billiard room.’
Herne stepped over to the door that had opened and followed the man through two rooms and into a third. At this door, the black stood to one side and nodded Herne through, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The sound echoed the length of the room. The ceiling was high and painted white, the walls were white also and light came from a window at the far end and a kerosene lamp which burned from a bracket above the table’s centre. There were low bookcases set against the walls, tables between them, one of which held a decanter and a tray of glasses. There was plenty of space around the sides of the table, space enough for the major to maneuver his wheel chair.
‘Jedediah Travis Herne?’
The reply, ‘Sir,’ was off Herne’s lips before he could call it back.
‘You were prompt.’
‘I came as fast as I could. Once I got your letter.’
‘I was afraid it wouldn’t reach you.’
‘Luck.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
The major slid his cue onto the table and set his hands against the wheels, setting the chair rolling slowly forward. Herne did his best not to stare at the hands—they were buckled at the centre, the knuckles swollen and purple and the fingers crabbed inwards and bloodless. Each application of pressure to the wheels made him wince with pain.
‘Pretty, ain’t they?’ He lifted them up before his chest and looked at them with scorn. ‘Like the rest of me. So damned twisted by rheumatism I can’t do the simplest thing without so much difficulty that it almost ceases to be worth doing anything.’
Herne started to say something, stopped; he didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound as empty and hollow as the door echoing down the room.
‘This game,’ said the major, turning towards the table, ‘is about the only damn thing left I can do without having someone to help me. Even then it takes me minutes to line up the damn cue and I still miss the blasted ball more times than not.’ A scowl passed over his face. ‘But it passes the time a little less slowly.’
Herne nodded, waited, felt a whole lot less than comfortable.
‘Have a drink, Mr. Herne. That’s about the only other thing I’ve got the stomach for. All the rest—riding, shooting, women—they’re gone for nothing. Memories.’ He shook his head and rolled the chair towards the decanter.
‘Good Scotch whisky. Damn, if it’s about all I can enjoy, I might as well have the best.’
Herne took his glass and watched as the major poured his own close to the brim.
‘To the success of your visit!’ The major lifted the glass and his hand shook, whisky spilled over his fingers and down onto his lap. If he noticed, he gave no sign.
Herne raised his glass and tasted the Scotch. It was smoother than anything he could remember tasting, warm but with a warmth that was reassuring. It didn’t take long for him to realize that it was strong too.
‘You seem to have led quite a life since the war.’
‘That’s been over a long time.’
The major
grunted and shook his head, almost with resignation. ‘Sometimes I think more’s the pity—at least in those days I could function as a man should. But then I think of all those lives that were lost, wasted, more to disease than enemy bullets.’ He grunted again. ‘Whoever the enemy were. Our own people, our own brothers. You, you managed to fight for both sides, I believe?’
‘Circumstances didn’t allow me a whole lot of choice.’
The major looked away, drank a little more whisky. He was so still that Herne wondered if he hadn’t wandered off into some former time, leaving the spoilt shell of his body behind in the room.
When he spoke again, it was as a surprise. ‘Since then you’ve been living by your gun.’
‘It was what they taught me.’
‘No family.’
‘Not for long.’
The major looked at him with narrowed eyes but kept his question stilled.
‘You may be lucky there.’
Herne set his glass down on the table and without asking the major poured him another, the decanter almost slipping from his crippled hands.
‘I have a family and there are times … my wife has been dead these fifteen years. Since before business brought me to the coast.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe she had better sense that I ever gave her credit for. God rest her soul. Meanwhile I have two daughters, the eldest is a woman and the youngest behaves as if she were—except when it suits her to be like a child. I’ve done my best to bring them up according to some standards of decency and good behavior, but when you’re restricted to a wheel chair such things are not easy. Young women are especially mobile whenever they’re out of sight. D’you know much about young women, Mr. Herne?’
‘I did once.’
‘Then perhaps you’ll know what I mean.’
Herne didn’t answer. He had met Louise when she was sixteen, married her at seventeen; before she was twenty-one she had put on the dress she had worn to her wedding and hanged herself in the barn. Memories blur: some memories.
The door stood open, and a light wind had sprung up, making it creak on its hinges. He paused at the entrance, turning and looking around at the land about their spread, knowing that he was seeing it for the last time with that special vision that his wife had brought him. The rising sun glistened off the slopes of white, making his eyes hurt.
Inside, it was very quiet. She had climbed up on a box to do it and then merely stepped silently into eternity. The noose had dug into her neck, leaving an ugly burn, but apart from that she looked very peaceful, hands hanging limply at her sides, a shaft of light gleaming off the gold wedding ring.
And the dress looked pretty. Dark green velvet, with white lace at collar and cuffs. Direct from Paris, France, like the book said.
It was a very pretty dress.
Some stayed clear in the mind, clear to the touch. He swallowed the second shot in one and when Major Russell looked at him enquiringly, Herne looked away.
The major reached for a brass bell beside the decanter and rang it several times. Before the tones had faded, the black was in the room, an envelope in his hand. He gave the envelope to the major, looked at Herne with something close to contempt and went out.
‘He been with you a long time?’
‘Since my wife died. Why d’you ask?’
Herne looked towards the closed door and again he didn’t answer.
‘You don’t like him,’ the major said. It was hardly a question.
‘Not a lot.’
‘Nor do most men. Most women either. It’s one of the things that makes him valuable to me. I’m the only person he cares anything about. If he thought you meant me harm, he’d break your neck with his bare hands.’
‘He’d try.’
‘Don’t underestimate him, Mr. Herne!’
‘I’ll be sure not to. But bare hands don’t stand up to a gun. Not in any fight I’ve ever seen.’
The major opened the envelope and took out three pieces of paper. Each one had words and figures, each of the amounts was larger than the one before it. Each was signed with the name Cassie Russell.
‘She’s the grown up one?’
‘If she was I wouldn’t have sent for you. Cassie’s the youngest; the eldest is called Veronica.’
‘And what are they?’
‘What they look like. They’re gambling debts.’
‘It seems like a lot of money.’
‘It’s not far short of two thousand dollars.’
‘And you don’t want to see them paid?’
‘Would you?’
‘I don’t know. For one thing, I don’t know if they’re genuine.’
‘Oh, they’re real enough. Cassie only likes one thing more than gambling and she’s pretty enough not to have to pay for that yet.’
‘Then maybe you should pay them.’
‘It curdles what blood I’ve got left to pay that sort of money to a man like Daniels.’
‘Daniels?’
‘Cord Daniels. He owns a gambling house on Kearney Street. It’s illegal in the city but he can afford to pay the police force enough from his profits to ensure that he stays open. And besides he only admits the best customers, nothing that will drag the city’s name into the mud. Everyone suspects that the tables are fixed and the cards are marked but no one’s ever been able to prove it.
‘He’s got other interests, too. Like a brothel on the intersection of Grant and Market Street where it’ll cost a man twenty-five dollars a time to take one of the whores out of the parlor and up the stairs. He isn’t a man to cross and he usually has enough men with him to make sure that nobody as much as tries.’
‘Sounds as if your daughter chooses her companions pretty well.’
‘You’d have to hide a snake a long way under the rock before Cassie’s pretty little hands wouldn’t come up with it.’
Herne leaned against the edge of the billiard table and had another look at the pieces of paper, they were all dated inside the last two months, the latest no more than three weeks ago.
‘Has he been threatening her at all, trying to force her to pay up?’
Major Russell shook his head. ‘He doesn’t feel there’s any need. He’s certain I’ll pay up when I’ve stewed in my juices long enough. He’s as good as told Cassie so.’
‘And he hasn’t stopped her gambling?’
‘Why would he? As long as she carries on losing, he stands to make even more out of her. And besides—she’s young and pretty.’
‘And that’s how this Daniels likes his women?’
‘You know a man as doesn’t?’
The question stung Herne more than perhaps it should. He took a few paces around the table, lifted up the cue and sent the white ball across the table so that it nestled against the white by the bottom cushion.
‘What d’you want me to do?’
‘See Daniels. Find out if anything’s going on between him and my daughter. Anything more than these scraps of paper. If there is I’ll have it stopped, I’m not sure how, but I’ll have it stopped.’
‘And the money?’
Tell him I’m not going to pay. Tell him what he’s doing is illegal and there’s no way in which those i.o.u.s would stand up in court. Tell him if he wants them settled, he’ll have to get me up in front of a judge. Maybe then he’ll stop Cassie gambling at his place, if he realizes he isn’t going to make anything out of it.’
He downed his whisky and smoothed his tongue around the white moustache which curled over his upper lip. His eyes were pale and watery and the only time they ever gave a sign of life was when the pain hit them and they burned and flinched. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair as best they could.
‘In your letter …’ Herne began.
‘I said I’d pay you five hundred dollars now and another five hundred when everything’s settled to my satisfaction. If that doesn’t seem enough I …’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Good. Lucas will give you the first instalment on the way out
. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to finish my game and then take a rest. I’m not used to meeting people and doing this much talking and it wears me out.’
Herne nodded and set off towards the door.
‘One more thing, Mr. Herne.’
‘Yeah?’
‘There was a man … name of Connors … I asked him to find out what he could about Daniels.’
‘And . . . ?’
‘And they found him floating in the bay. His throat had been cut.’
Lucas was waiting in the marbled lobby with another envelope in his hand; this one was fatter and he passed it over grudgingly. Herne pulled open the flap and thumbed through the bills—there were about enough there to be right. ‘The major seems to think you’re a man to be trusted.’ The black narrowed his eyes and stretched the fingers of both hands, cracking the knuckles.
‘He also seems to think you’re dangerous.’
Lucas continued to stare at him, flexing his fingers all the while.
Herne grinned but there was nothing humorous about it; he jutted his face close enough to Lucas so that he didn’t have to speak above a whisper. ‘Between you an’ me, I don’t think you’re either. I wouldn’t trust you out of my sight and I think you’re about as dangerous as a bobcat with its claws pulled and its teeth drawn.’
The lip came back over the teeth and this time there was a tight hissing sound.
Herne laughed and stepped back.
‘Don’t bother to open the door, I’ll find my own way out.’
At the door he looked back and Lucas was still staring at him, hostility showing in the tautness of his body, the rigid expression of his face.
Herne was half way along the drive when a movement behind one of the tall, tapering shrubs made him turn fast, his hand moving automatically to the gun at his hip.
The woman caught her breath and stood looking at him, at his face and then, pointedly, at the pistol in its holster, his fingers tight around the hip, the end of his thumb under the safety thong, ready to flick it clear.
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