The Drowning Pool

by Ross Macdonald

  “You’ll have to ask James—but not now. He takes peculiar fancies to people.” She wasn’t a competent liar. “Of course, Mr. Knudson isn’t an ordinary policeman. He’s the Chief of Police in town, and I understand he has a rather distinguished record.”

  “But you don’t really want him at your parties, is that it? I used to be a cop, and I’m still one in a way. I’ve felt that kind of snobbery myself.”

  “I’m not a snob!” she said fiercely. Apparently I’d touched something she valued. “My parents were ordinary people, and I’ve always hated snobs. But why I should be defending myself to you!”

  “Then let me come in for a drink. I promise to be very suave and smooth.”

  “You’re so terribly persistent—as if I didn’t have enough to contend with. What makes you so persistent?”

  “Curiosity, I guess. I’m getting interested in the case. It’s quite an interesting setup you’ve got here; I’ve never seen a fishline with more tangles.”

  “I suppose you realize I can dismiss you, if you continue to make yourself completely obnoxious.”

  “You won’t.”

  “And why won’t I?”

  “I think you’re expecting trouble. You said yourself that something was building up. I can feel it in the air. And it’s possible your policeman friend didn’t come up here for fun.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. And he isn’t my friend. Frankly, Mr. Archer, I’ve never had to deal with a more difficult—employee, than you.”

  I didn’t like the word. “It might help you,” I said, “if you thought of me as an independent contractor. In this case I’m expected to build a house without going near the lot.” Or perhaps demolish a house, but I didn’t add that.

  She looked at me steadily for twenty or thirty seconds. Finally a smile touched her generous mouth and parted it. “You know, I think I rather like you, damn it. Very well, come in and meet the wonderful people, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “You talked me into it.”

  I got my drink and lost my hostess in the same motion, as soon as we entered the big living-room. Ralph Knudson, the big man who was no friend of hers, caught her eye as she handed me my glass. She went to him. Her husband and Francis Marvell were sitting on the piano bench with their heads together, leafing through a thick volume of music. I looked around at the rest of the wonderful people. Mrs. Galway, the amateur actress, with the professional smile clicking off and on like a white electric sign. A bald-headed man in white flannels setting off his mahogany tan, who daintily smoked a small brown cigarillo in a long green-gold holder. A fat man with a cropped gray head, in a tweed suit with padded shoulders, who turned out to be a woman when she moved her nyloned legs. A woman leaning awkwardly on the arm of the chair beside her, with a dark long tragic face and an ugly body. A youth who moved gracefully about the room, pouring drinks for everybody and smoothing the receding hair at his temples. A round little woman who tinkled on and on, whose bracelets and earrings tinkled when her voice paused.

  I listened to them talk. Existentialism, they said. Henry Miller and Truman Capote and Henry Moore. André Gide and Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes. And sex—hard-boiled, poached, coddled, shirred, and fried easy over in sweet, fresh creamery butter. Sex solo, in duet, trio, quartet; for all-male chorus; for choir and symphony; and played on the harpsichord in three-fourths time. And Albert Schweitzer and the dignity of everything that lives.

  The fat man who had been listening to the tinkling woman closed his face against her and became absorbed in his drink. She looked around brightly and gaily like a bird, saw me, and picked up her drink. It was short and green. She sat down on a hassock by my chair, crossed her plump ankles so that I could see the tininess of her feet, and tinkled:

  “I so love creme de menthe; it’s such a pretty drink, and I always drink it when I wear my emeralds.” She bobbed her birdlike head, and the earrings swung. They were the right color, but almost too big to be real.

  “I always eat oyster stew when I wear my pearls,” I said.

  Her laughter had the same quality as her voice, and was an octave higher. I decided not to make her laugh, if possible.

  “You’re Mr. Archer, aren’t you? I’ve heard such interesting things about you. My daughter’s on the stage in New York, you know. Her father’s constantly urging her to come home, because of course it costs him a great deal of money, but I tell him, after all, a girl is only young once. Don’t you agree?”

  “Some people manage it twice. If they live long enough.”

  I meant it as an insult, but she thought it was funny, and made me the curious gift of her laughter again. “You must have heard of Felice. She dances under the name of Felicia France. Leonard Lyons has mentioned her several times. Mr. Marvell thinks she has dramatic talent, too; he’d love to have her play the ingénue in his play. But Felice has given her heart and soul to the dance. She has a very, very beautiful body, dear child. I had a lovely body myself at one time, really utterly lovely.” Meditatively, she fingered herself, like a butcher testing meat which had hung too long.

  I looked away, anywhere, and saw James Slocum standing up by the piano. Marvell struck a few opening chords, and Slocum began to sing, in a thin sweet tenor, the Ballad of Barbara Allen. The trickle of melody gradually filled the room like clear water, and the bubbling chatter subsided. Slocum’s face was untroubled and radiant, a boy tenor’s. Everyone in the room was watching it before the song ended, and he knew it, and wanted it that way. He was Peter Pan, caught out of time. His song had killed the crocodile with the ticking clock in its belly.

  “Quite utterly lovely,” the emerald earrings tinkled. “It always reminds me of Scotland for some reason. Edinburgh is really one of my favorite places in the world. What is your favorite place in the whole wide world, Mr. Archer?”

  “Ten feet underwater at La Jolla, watching the fish through a face-glass.”

  “Are fish so terribly fascinating?”

  “They have some pleasant qualities. You don’t have to look at them unless you want to. And they can’t talk.”

  Below her bird-brained laughter, and drowning it out, a heavy male voice said clearly: “That was very nice, James. Now why don’t you and Marvell sing a duet?”

  It was Ralph Knudson. Most of the eyes in the room shifted to him, and wavered away again. His thick face was bulging with blood and malice. Maude Slocum was standing beside him, facing her husband. Slocum stood where he was, his face as white as snow. Marvell was motionless, his eyes fixed on the keyboard and his back to the room. Short of homicidal violence, the atmosphere around the piano was as ugly as I had ever seen.

  Maude Slocum walked through it, moving easily from Knudson to her husband, and touched him on the arm. He drew away from her, and she persisted.

  “That would be nice, James,” she said simply and quietly, “If only Francis had a voice like yours. But why don’t you sing by yourself? I’ll accompany you.”

  She took Marvell’s place at the bench, and played while her husband sang. Knudson watched them, smiling like a tiger. I felt like going for a long drive by myself.

  chapter 6

  The fire in the sky had died, leaving long wisps of cloud like streaks of ashes livid against the night. All I could see of the mountains was their giant shadowed forms shouldering the faintly lighted sky. A few lights sprinkled their flanks, and a car’s headlights inched down into the other side of the valley and were lost in darkness. Then the night was so still that motion seemed impossible, all of us insects caught in the final amber. I moved and broke the spell, feeling my way down the dew-slick terraces beside the flagstone walk.

  I closed a contact when I took hold of the left door-handle of my convertible. The headlights and dashlights came on with a click. My right hand moved by reflex under my coat for a gun that wasn’t there. Then I saw the girl’s hand on the switch, the girl’s face like a ghost’s leaning towards me.

  “It’s only me, Mr. Archer. Cathy.” There was night
in her voice, in her eyes, night caught like mist in her hair. In a soft wool coat buttoned up to her soft chin, she was one of the girls I had watched from a distance in high school and never been able to touch; the girls with oil or gold or free-flowing real-estate money dissolved in their blood like blueing. She was also young enough to be my daughter.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Nothing.” She settled back in the seat and I slid under the wheel. “I just turned on the lights for you. I’m sorry if I startled you, I didn’t mean to.”

  “Why pick on my car? You’ve got one of your own.”

  “Two. But father took the keys. Besides, I like your car. The seat is very comfortable. May I ride along with you?” She gave her voice a wheedling little-girl inflection.

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere you’re going. Quinto? Please, Mr. Archer?”

  “I don’t think so. You’re a little young to be running around nights by yourself.”

  “It’s not late, and I’d be with you.”

  “Even with me,” I said. “You’d better go back to the house, Cathy.”

  “I won’t. I hate those people. I’ll stay out here all night.”

  “Not with me you won’t. I’m leaving now.”

  “You won’t take me along?” Her clenched hand vibrated on my forearm. There was a note in her voice that hurt my ears like the screech of chalk on a wet blackboard. The smell of her hair was as clean and strange as the redheaded girl’s who sat ahead of me in senior year.

  “I’m not a nursemaid,” I said harshly. “And your parents wouldn’t like it. If something’s bothering you, take it up with your mother.”

  “Her!” She pulled away from me and sat stonily, her eyes on the lighted house.

  I got out and opened the door on her side. “Good night.”

  She didn’t move, even to look at me.

  “Do you get out under your own power, or do I lift you out by the nape of the neck?”

  She turned on me like a cat, her eyes distended: “You wouldn’t dare touch me.”

  She was right. I took a few steps toward the house, my heels grinding angrily in the gravel, and she was out of the car and after me. “Please don’t call them. I’m afraid of them. That Knudson man—” She was standing on the margin of the car’s light, her face bleached white by it and her eyes stained inky black.

  “What about him?”

  “Mother always wants me to make up to him. I don’t know if she wants me to marry him, or what. I can’t tell father, or father would kill him. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m sorry, Cathy, you’re not my baby.” I moved to touch her shoulder, but she drew back as if I carried disease. “Why don’t you get the cook to make you some hot milk and put you to bed? Things usually look better in the morning.”

  “Better in the morning,” she repeated, with toneless, empty irony.

  She was still standing tense and straight, with her hands clenched at her sides, when I started to back the car. The white beam swerved as I turned, and left her in darkness.

  I stopped at the gate, but it was open, and I went on through. A few hundred yards beyond it a tall man appeared in the road, lifting his thumb for a ride. I was passing him up when I caught a glimpse of his face: Pat Reavis. I braked to a quick stop and he came running.

  “Thanks very much, sir.” He smelled strongly of whisky, but he didn’t look drunk. “Your dashboard clock working?”

  I compared the lighted dial with my watch. Both indicated twenty-three minutes after eight. “Seems to be.”

  “It’s later than I thought, then. God, I sure hate walking. I walked enough in the Marines to last me the rest of my life. My own car’s in the garage, front end smashed.”

  “Where did you do all the walking?”

  “One place and another. I landed on Guadal with Carlson’s Raiders, for one. But we won’t go into that. You know the Slocums?”

  To get him talking, I said: “Anybody who is anybody knows the Slocums.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he answered in the same tone. “All that class. What the Slocums need is an equalizer.” But he said it in a good-humored way. “You trying to sell them something?”

  “Life insurance.” I was tired of the farce of pretending to be interested in Marvell’s play.

  “No kidding? That’s a laugh.” He laughed to prove it.

  “People die,” I said. “Is it so funny?”

  “I bet you ten to one you didn’t sell any, and you never will. The old lady’s worth more dead than she is alive already, and the rest of them don’t have one nickel to clink against another.”

  “I don’t get it. I heard they were good prospects, well-heeled.”

  “Sure, the old lady’s sitting on a couple of million bucks in oil, but she won’t sell or lease. Slocum and his wife can’t wait for her to bump. The day she bumps, they’ll be down at the travel bureau buying tickets for a de luxe round-the-world cruise. The oil under the ground’s their life insurance, so you can stop wasting your time.”

  “I appreciate the tip. My name is Archer.”

  “Reavis,” he said. “Pat Reavis.”

  “You seem to know the Slocums pretty well.”

  “Too damn well. I been their chauffeur for the last six months. No more, though. The bastards fired me.”

  “Why?”

  “How the hell do I know. I guess they just got sick of looking at my pan. I got sick enough looking at theirs.”

  “That’s a nice-looking kid they got, though. What was her name?”

  “Cathy.”

  But he gave me a quick look, and I dropped the subject. “The wife has her points, too,” I offered.

  “She had it once, I guess. No more. She’s turning into another bitch like the old lady. A bunch of women go sour like milk when they got no man around to tell them where to get off.”

  “There’s Slocum, isn’t there?”

  “I said a man.” He snorted. “Hell, I’m talking too much.”

  The car went over the little ridge that marked the edge of the mesa. The headlights swept empty blackness and dipped down into the valley. There were a few islands of brightness on either side of the road where night crews were working to bring in new wells. Further down the slope, aluminum-painted oil tanks lay under searchlights like a row of thick huge silver dollars in a kitty. At the foot of the hill the lights of the town began, white and scattered on the outskirts, crowded and crawling with color in the business section, where they cast a fiery glow above the buildings.

  The traffic in the main street was heavy and unpredictable. Fenderless jalopies threatened my fenders. Hot rods built low to the ground and stacked with gin-mill cowboys roamed the neon trails with their mufflers off. A man in a custom-made Buick stopped in my path abruptly to kiss a woman in the seat beside him, and drove on with her mouth attached to the side of his neck. Eats, Drinks, Beer, Liquor, the signs announced: Antonio’s, Bill’s, Helen’s, The Boots and Saddle. Little knots of men formed on the sidewalk, jabbered and laughed and gesticulated, and broke apart under the pull of the bars.

  Reavis was feeling that pull, his eyes were glistening with it. “Anywhere along here,” he said impatiently. “And thanks a million.”

  I angled into the first empty parking space and turned off the lights and ignition. He looked at me with one long leg out the door. “You staying in town tonight?”

  “I’ve got a room in Quinto. Right now I could use a drink.”

  “You and me both, friend. Come on, I’ll show you the best place in town. Better lock your car.”

  We walked back a block and turned into Antonio’s. It was a single large room, high-ceilinged and deep, with restaurant booths along one wall and a fifty-foot bar to the left. At the far end a fry cook worked in a cloud of steam. We found two empty stools near him. Everything in the place looked as if it had been there for a long time, but it was well-kept. The cigarette butts on the floor were new, the scarred mahogany surface
of the bar was clean and polished. Reavis rested his arms on it as if it belonged to him. The sleeves of his gaudy shirt were rolled up, and his forearms looked as heavy and hard as the wood under them.

  “Nice place,” I said. “What are you drinking?”

  His answer surprised me: “Uh-uh. This is on me. You treat me like a gentleman, I treat you like a gentleman, see?”

  He turned and smiled wide, full in my face, and I had my first chance to study him. The teeth were white, the black eyes frank and boyish, the lines of the features firm and clean. Reavis had quantities of raw charm. But underneath it there was something lacking. I could talk to him all night and never find his core, because he had never found it.

  He offered the smile too long; something for sale. I put a cigarette in my mouth. “Hell, you just lost your job. I’ll buy the drinks.”

  “There are plenty of jobs,” he said. “But buy ’em if you want. I drink Bushmill’s Irish whisky myself.”

  I was reaching for a match when a lighter flicked under my nose and lit my cigarette. The bartender had approached us noiselessly, a middle-sized man with a smooth hairless head and a lean ascetic face. “Good evening, Pat,” he said without expression, replacing the lighter in the pocket of his white jacket. “What are you gentlemen drinking?”

  “Bushmill’s for him. A whisky sour for me.”

  He nodded and moved away, narrow-hipped and poised as a ballet-dancer.

  “Tony’s a cold-blooded bastard,” Reavis said. “He’ll take your money for six months and then cut you off with a cup of coffee if he thinks you’re eighty-six. Now I’m not Jesus Christ—”

  “Excuse my mistake.”

  “You’re a right gee, Lew.” He smiled the big raw smile again, but he got to first names too quickly. “What do you say we pull the rag and have ourselves a time? I got me a neat blonde stashed over at Helen’s. Gretchen can find you a playmate. The night’s still young.”

  “Younger than I am.”

  “What’s the trouble, you married or something?”

  “Not at present. I have to hit the road early tomorrow.”