The Barbarous Coast

by Ross Macdonald

  “He was shot and killed last night.”

  “I know that. Captain Spero told me he was dead, shot in the eye.” Tony touched the lid of his left eye with his right forefinger. His upturned face resembled a cracked clay death mask.

  “What else did Spero say?”

  “I dunno. Said it was maybe another gang killing, but I dunno. He asked me, did Manuel have enemies? I told him, yah, he had one big enemy, name of Manuel Torres. What did I know about his life, his friends? He bust up from me long ago and went on his own road, straight down to hell in a low-top car.” Through the stoic Indian mask, his eyes shone with black, living grief. “I dunno, I coulden tear that boy loose from my heart. He was like my own son to me, one time.”

  His bowed shoulders moved with his breathing. He said: “I’m gonna get out of this place, it’s bad luck for me and my family. I still got friends in Fresno. I ought to stayed in Fresno, never left it. I made the same mistake that Manuel made, thought I could come and take what I wanted. They wooden let me take it. They leave me with nothing, no wife, no daughter, no Manuel.”

  He balled his fist and struck himself on the cheekbone and looked around the room in confused awe, as though it was the lair of gods which he had offended. The room reminded him of his duty to it:

  “What you doing in here, Mr. Archer? You got no right in here.”

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Graff.”

  “Why didden you say so? You didden have to break the door down. Mrs. Graff was here a few minutes ago. She wanted Mr. Bassett, only he ain’t here.”

  “Where is Mrs. Graff now?”

  “She went down on the beach. I tried to stop her, she ain’t in very good shape. She wooden come with me, though. You think I ought to telephone Mr. Graff?”

  “If you can get in touch with him. Where’s Bassett?”

  “I dunno, he was packing his stuff before. He’s going away on his vacation, maybe. He always goes to Mexico for a month in the off-season. Used to show me colored pictures—”

  I left him talking to the empty room and went to the end of the pool. The gate in the fence was open. Twenty feet below it, the beach sloped away to the water, delimited by the wavering line of white foam. The sight of the ocean gave me a queasy feeling: it reminded me of Carl Stern doing the dead man’s float.

  Waves rose like apparitions at the surf-line, and fell like masonry. Beyond them a padded wall of fog was sliding shoreward. I went down the concrete steps, met by a snatch of sound which blew up to me between the thumpings of the surf. It was Isobel Graff talking to the ocean in a voice like a gull’s screek. She dared it to come and get her. She sat hunched over her knees, just beyond its reach, and shook her fist at the muttering water.

  “Dirty old cesspool, I’m not afraid of you.”

  Her profile was thrust forward, gleaming white with a gleaming dark eye in it. She heard me moving toward her and cowered away, one arm thrown over her face.

  “Leave me alone. I won’t go back. I’ll die first.”

  “Where have you been all day?”

  Her wet black eyes peered up from under her arm. “It’s none of your business. Go away.”

  “I think I’ll stay with you.”

  I sat beside her on the impacted sand, so close that our shoulders touched. She drew away from the contact, but made no other move. Her dark and unkempt bird’s-head twisted toward me suddenly. She said in her own voice:

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Isobel. Where have you been all day?”

  “On the beach, mostly. I felt like a nice long walk. A little girl gave me an ice-cream cone, she cried when I took it away from her, I am an old horror. But it was all I had to eat all day. I promised to send her a check, only I’m afraid to go home. That dirty old man might be there.”

  “What dirty old man?”

  “The one that made a pass at me when I took the sleeping-pills. I saw him when I passed out. He had a rotten breath like Father’s when he died. And he had worms that were his eyes.” Her voice was singsong.

  “Who had?”

  “Old Father Deathmas with the long white dirty beard.” Her mood was ugly and ambiguous. She wasn’t too far gone to know what she was saying, just far enough gone to say it. “He made a pass at me, only I was too tired, and there I was in the morning back at the old stand with the same hot and cold running people. What am I going to do? I’m afraid of the water. I can’t stand the thought of the violent ways, and sleeping-pills don’t work. They simply pump you out and walk you up and down and feed you coffee and there you are back at the old stand.”

  “When did you try sleeping-pills?”

  “Oh, a long time ago, when Father made me marry Simon. I was in love with another man.”

  “Clarence?”

  “He was the only one I ever. Clare was so sweet to me.”

  The wall of fog had crossed the foam-line and was almost on top of us. The surf pounded behind it like a despondent visitor. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I looked down at her face, which slanted up close to mine: a pale ghost of a face with two dark eye-holes and a mouth-hole in it. She was tainted by disease and far from young, but in the foggy night she looked more like a child than a woman. A disordered child who had lost her way and met death on the detour.

  Her head leaned on my shoulder. “I’m caught,” she said. “I’ve been trying all day to get up the nerve to walk into the water. What am I going to do? I can’t endure forever in a room.”

  “In the church you were brought up in, suicide is a sin.”

  “I’ve committed worse.”

  I waited. The fog was all around us now, an element composed of air and water and a fishy chill. It made a kind of limbo, out of this world, where anything could be said. Isobel Graff said:

  “I committed the worst sin of all. They were together in the light and I was alone in the darkness. Then the light was like broken glass in my eyes, but I could see to shoot. I shot her in the groin and she died.”

  “This happened in your cabaña?”

  She nodded faintly. I felt the movement rather than saw it. “I caught her there with Simon. She crawled out here and died on the beach. The waves came up and took her. I wish that they would take me.”

  “What happened to Simon that night?”

  “Nothing. He ran away. To do it again another day and do it and do it and do it. He was terrified when I came out of the back room with the gun in my hand. He was the one I really intended to kill, but he scuttled out the door.”

  “Where did you get the gun?”

  “It was Simon’s target pistol. He kept it in his locker. He taught me to fire it himself, on this very beach.” She stirred in the crook of my arm. “What do you think of me now?”

  I didn’t have to answer her. There was a moving voice in the fog above our heads. It was calling her name, Isobel.

  “Who is it? Don’t let them take me.” She turned on her knees and clutched my hand. Hers was fish-cold.

  Footsteps and light were descending the concrete steps. I got up and went to meet them. The beam of light wavered toward me. Graff’s dim and nimbused figure was behind it. The long, thin nose of a target pistol protruded from his other hand. My gun was already in mine.

  “You’re covered, Graff. Drop it directly in front of you.”

  His pistol thudded softly in the sand. I stooped and picked it up. It was an early-model German Walther, .22 caliber, with a custom-made walnut grip too small to fit my hand. The gun was loaded. Distrusting its hair-trigger action, I set the safety and shoved it down under my belt.

  “I’ll take the light, too.”

  He handed me his flashlight. I turned its beam upward on his face and saw it naked for an instant. His mouth was soft and twisted, his eyes were frightened.

  “I heard my wife. Where is she?”

  I swung the flash-beam along the beach. Its cone of brilliance filled with swirling fog. Isobel Graff ran away from it. Black and huge on the gray air, her shadow ran ahead
of her. She seemed to be driving off a fury which dwarfed her and tormented her and mimicked all her movements.

  Graff called her name again and ran after her. I followed along behind and saw her fall and get up and fall again. Graff helped her to her feet. They walked back toward me, slowly and clumsily. She dragged her feet and hung her head, turning her face away from the light. Graff’s arm around her waist propelled her forward.

  I took the target pistol out of my belt and showed it to her. “Is this the gun you used to shoot Gabrielle Torres?”

  She glanced at it and nodded mutely.

  “No,” Graff said. “Admit nothing, Isobel.”

  “She’s already confessed,” I said.

  “My wife is mentally incompetent. Her confession is not valid evidence.”

  “The gun is. The sheriff’s ballistics department will have the matching slugs. The gun and the slugs together will be unshakable evidence. Where did you get the gun, Graff?”

  “Carl Walther made it for me, in Germany, many years ago.”

  “I’m talking about the last twenty-four hours. Where did you get it this time?”

  He answered carefully: “I have had it in my possession continuously for over twenty years.”

  “The hell you have. Stern had it last night before he was killed. Did you kill him for it?”

  “That is ridiculous.”

  “Did you have him killed?”

  “I did not.”

  “Somebody knocked off Stern to get hold of this gun. You must know who it was, and you might as well tell me. Everything’s going to come out now. Not even your kind of money can stop it.”

  “Is money what you want from me? You can have money.” His voice dragged with contempt—for me, and perhaps for himself.

  “I’m not for sale like Marfeld,” I said. “Your boss thug tried to buy me. He’s in the Vegas clink with a body to explain.”

  “I know that,” Graff said. “But I am talking about a very great deal of money. A hundred thousand dollars in cash. Now. Tonight.”

  “Where would you get that much in cash tonight?”

  “From Clarence Bassett. He has it in his office safe. I paid it to him this evening. It was the price he set on the pistol. Take it away from him, and you can have it.”

  chapter 32

  THERE was light in Bassett’s office. I knocked so hard that I bruised my knuckles. He came to the door in shirt sleeves. His face was putty-colored, with blue hollows under the eyes. His eyes had a Lazarus look, and hardly seemed to recognize me.

  “Archer? What’s the trouble, man?”

  “You’re the trouble, Clarence.”

  “Oh, I hope not.” He noticed the couple behind me, and did a big take. “You’ve found her, Mr. Graff. I’m so glad.”

  “Are you?” Graff said glumly. “Isobel has confessed everything to this man. I want my money back.”

  Bassett’s face underwent a process of change. The end product of the process was a bright, nervous grin which resembled the rictus of a dead horse.

  “Am I to understand this? I return the money, and we drop the whole matter? Nothing more will be said?”

  “Plenty more will be said. Give him his money, Clarence.”

  He stood tense in the doorway, blocking my way. Visions of possible action flitted behind his pale-blue eyes and died. “It’s not here.”

  “Open the safe and we’ll see for ourselves.”

  “You have no warrant.”

  “I don’t need one. You’re willing to co-operate. Aren’t you?”

  He reached up and plucked at his neck above the open collar of his button-down shirt, stretching the loose skin and letting it pull itself back into place. “This has been a bit of a shock. As a matter of fact, I am willing to co-operate. I have nothing to hide.”

  He turned abruptly, crossed the room, and took down the photograph of the three divers. A cylindrical safe was set in the wall behind it. I covered him with the target pistol as he spun the bright chrome dials. The gun he had used on Leonard was probably at the bottom of the sea, but there could be another gun in the safe. All the safe contained was money, though—bundles of money done up in brown bank paper.

  “Take it,” Graff said. “It is yours.”

  “It would only make a bum out of me. Besides, I couldn’t afford to pay the tax on it.”

  “You are joking. You must want money. You work for money, don’t you?”

  “I want it very badly,” I said. “But I can’t take this money. It wouldn’t belong to me, I would belong to it. It would expect me to do things, and I would have to do them. Sit on the lid of this mess of yours, the way Marfeld did, until dry rot set in.”

  “It would be easy to cover up,” Graff said.

  He turned a basilisk eye on Clarence Bassett. Bassett flattened himself against the wall. The fear of death invaded his face and galvanized his body. He swatted the gun out of my hand, went down on his hands and knees, and got a grip on the butt. I snaked it away from him before he could consolidate his grip, lifted him by the collar, and set him in the chair at the end of his desk.

  Isobel Graff had collapsed in the chair behind the desk. Her head was thrown back, and her undone hair poured like black oil over the back of the chair. Bassett avoided looking at her. He sat hunched far over to one side away from her, trembling and breathing hard.

  “I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of. I shielded an old friend from the consequences of her actions. Her husband saw fit to reward me.”

  “That’s the gentlest description of blackmail I ever heard. Not that blackmail covers what you’ve done. Are you going to tell me you knocked off Leonard and Stern to protect Isobel Graff?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “When you tried to frame Isobel for the murder of Hester Campbell, was that part of your protection service?”

  “I did nothing of the sort.”

  The woman echoed him: “Clare did nothing of the sort.”

  I turned to her. “You went to her house in Beverly Hills yesterday afternoon?”

  She nodded.

  “Why did you go there?”

  “Clare told me she was Simon’s latest chippie. He’s the only one who tells me things, the only one who cares what happens to me. Clare said if I caught them together, I could force Simon to give me a divorce. Only she was already dead. I walked into the house, and she was already dead.” She spoke resentfully, as though Hester Campbell had deliberately stood her up.

  “How did you know where she lived?”

  “Clare told me.” She smiled at him in bright acknowledgement. “Yesterday morning when Simon was having his dip.”

  “All this is utter nonsense,” Bassett said. “Mrs. Graff is imagining it. I didn’t even know where she lived, you can bear witness to that.”

  “You wanted me to believe you didn’t, but you knew, all right. You’d had her traced, and you’d been threatening her. You couldn’t afford to let George Wall get to her while she was still alive. But you wanted him to get to her eventually. Which is where I came in. You needed someone to lead him to her and help pin the frame on him. Just in case it didn’t take, you sent Mrs. Graff to the house to give you double insurance. The second frame was the one that worked—at least, it worked for Graff and his brilliant cohorts. They gave you a lot of free assistance in covering up that killing.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Graff said behind me. “I’m not responsible for Frost’s and Marfeld’s stupidity. They acted without consulting me.” He was standing by himself, just inside the door, as if to avoid any part in the proceedings.

  “They were your agents,” I told him, “and you’re responsible for what they did. They’re accessory after the fact of murder. You should be handcuffed to them.”

  Bassett was encouraged by our split. “You’re simply fishing,” he said. “I was fond of Hester Campbell, as you know. I had nothing against the girl. I had no reason to harm her.”

  “I
don’t doubt you were fond of her, in some peculiar way of your own. You were probably in love with her. She wasn’t in love with you, though. She was out to take you if she could. She ran out on you in September, and took along your most valuable possession.”

  “I’m a poor man. I have no valuable possessions.”

  “I mean this gun.” I held the Walther pistol out of his reach. “I don’t know exactly how you got it the first time. I think I know how you got it the second time. It’s been passed around quite a bit in the last four months, since Hester Campbell stole it from your safe. She turned it over to her friend Lance Leonard. He wasn’t up to handling the shakedown himself, so he co-opted Stern, who had experience in these matters. Stern also had connections which put him beyond the reach of Graff’s strong-arm boys. But not beyond your reach.

  “I’ll give you credit for one thing, Clarence. It took guts to tackle Stern, even if I did soften him up for you. More guts than Graff and his private army had.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Bassett said. “You know I didn’t kill him. You saw him leave.”

  “You followed him out, though, didn’t you? And you didn’t come back for a while. You had time to slug him in the parking-lot, bundle him into his car, and drive it up the bluff where you could slit his throat and push him into the sea. That was quite an effort for a man your age. You must have wanted this gun back very badly. Were you so hungry for a hundred grand?”

  Bassett looked up past me at the open safe. “Money had nothing to do with it.” It was his first real admission. “I didn’t know he had that gun in his car until he tried to pull it on me. I hit him with a tire-iron and knocked him out. It was kill or be killed. I killed him in self-defense.”

  “You didn’t cut his throat in self-defense.”

  “He was an evil man, a criminal, meddling in matters he didn’t understand. I destroyed him as you would destroy a dangerous animal.” He was proud of killing Stern. The pride shone in his face. It made him foolish. “A gangster and drug-peddler—is he more important than I? I’m a civilized man, I come from a good family.”