Linda’s unmarried sister had an apartment in Santa Monica and that was the direction the Buick took. Perhaps Horse had been wrong; perhaps Linda’s sister wasn’t out of town.
It was a short-lived hope. She continued on Wilshire all the way to the ocean. I let the Buick have a two-block lead; traffic was fairly light and Linda knew my car.
Off Wilshire to Ocean Avenue and along that to the ramp that dipped down to the Coast Highway. Where now, brown Buick? The Palisades? Topanga? I let her have a half mile here, keeping to the right under the shadow of the clay cliff.
Past the Palisades, heading north…. Traffic was heavy at the Topanga light, backed up solid for almost a quarter of a mile.
She made it; I didn’t.
And when the light finally changed for me and I got around the curve beyond it, all I could see were dozens of tail-lights with no way of telling which pair belonged to the Buick. I cut over to the left lane and put the accelerator to the floor.
I zoomed past them all and there was no car in sight on the highway ahead. Off to the right, I could see the headlights of a car on a winding road that led into the hills.
I was familiar with that road. A small, shocking hunch was suddenly born in me.
I turned off on Avalon Lane and started to climb. It was a narrow road, twisting up through the gray grass and rocks, the tinder-dry chaparral, almost a private road. It served, to the best of my knowledge, no more than eight homes and dead-ended at the top.
The moon came out from behind the overcast as I swung around one of the sharper turns about halfway up. Its light was strong enough for me to identify the car silhouetted against the wall of the canyon two turns ahead of me. It was the brown Buick.
The moonlight was bright enough for driving if I cut down my speed. I turned off the headlights and went into the low gear range.
I had traveled this road quite often. The house at the top had been a gathering place for the retired warriors, the scene of the twice-a-month poker game, the home of the Ram who had hit the jackpot
The son-of-a-bitch, I thought, the crazy son of a bitch! With all the luscious single girl she knows, he has to mess around with the wife of a friend.
About two hundred yards below the house at the top, short of a turn that screened it from that house, a neighbor’s driveway led off to the left I pulled in here and up onto the dry grass that bordered it.
A car at the top of this hill would be too obvious; there was only one house at the top of this hill. I went the rest of the way on foot, a short-cut across the crest I came within view of the house just as the door of the Buick slammed.
And now the front door of the house opened and I could see Scooter Calvin outlined in the light of the entry hall.
“Hello,” he called. “It’s about time.”
There was no answer. She came hurrying up the walk, Linda Malone, the wife of Edwin W. (Horse) Malone, the mother of Edwin W. Malone, Jr., aged three.
She came hurrying along the walk to her lover and then the door closed behind them and I stood there burning, hating them both.
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Copyright © 1961 by William Campbell Gault, Registration Renewed 1989
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This is a work of fiction.
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eISBN 10: 1-4405-3984-7
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3984-8
Vein of Violence Page 17
