The Way Some People Die

by Ross Macdonald

  “The needle,” I said.

  He crossed the room to a chest of drawers in the corner, and opened the top drawer. Mosquito wasted no money on front. The room stood as he had found it: bare discolored walls, broken-backed iron bed, cracked green blind over the single window, the rug on the floor marked with a threadbare path from the bed to the door of the bathroom. He could move at a minute’s notice into any one of ten thousand similar rooms in the city.

  He set an alcohol lamp on top of the chest of drawers and lit it with a silver cigarette-lighter. A new-looking needle gleamed in his other hand. “You want the forty, or the sixty-five main-liner?” he asked me over his shoulder.

  “Sixty-five. Your prices are high.”

  “Yeah, aren’t they? I like to see the money first, old man.”

  I showed him money.

  “Bring it over here.”

  He was melting some yellowish-white powder in a spoon. I counted sixty-five dollars down beside the hissing lamp.

  Water began to run behind the bathroom door. Somebody coughed. “Who’s in there?” I asked him.

  “Only a friend of mine, don’t get your wind up. Better take off your coat, or do you take it in the thigh?”

  “I want to see who’s in there. I’m loaded. I can’t take chances.”

  “It’s only a girl, old man.” His voice was soothing. “There ain’t the teensiest danger. Take off your coat and lie down like a good boy now.”

  He dipped the needle in the spoon and charged it, turning to me. I slapped it out of his hand.

  Mosquito’s face turned purplish red. The loose flesh under his tiny chin shook like a turkey’s wattles. His hand was in and out of the open drawer before I could hold him, and the blade of a spring-knife jumped up under my nose. “You dirty filthy beast, don’t you dare touch me.” He backed against the wall and crouched with the knife advanced, its double-edged blade pointing at the ceiling. “I’ll cut you if you lay a finger on me.”

  I brought the revolver out of my jacket pocket. “Put it away, Mosquito.”

  His small black eyes watched me uncertainly, looked down at the knife and crossed slightly, focused on its point. I swung the gun on him, cutting the wrist of his knife hand with the muzzle. The knife dropped to the floor. I stepped on it and moved in closer to Mosquito. He tried to scratch my face. Since it was necessary to hit him, I hit him: a short right hook under the ear. He slid down the wall like a rag doll.

  I crunched the hypodermic needle into the carpet with my heel, stooped for the knife, which I closed and dropped into my pocket. Mosquito was out, quick adenoidal breathing his only sign of life, his eyeballs under the heavy lids as blank-white as a statue’s. His head was jammed against the wall, and I lifted him away from it so he wouldn’t choke. His narrow black suède shoes pointed to opposite corners of the ceiling.

  The bathroom door clicked behind me. I straightened up quickly and turned. The door creaked inward slowly, opening on darkness. It was the girl Ruth who emerged from the darkness, moving like a sleepwalker. She had on pajamas that were much too big for her, yellow nylon piped with red. Thin soft hanging folds obscured her lines and enhanced the dreaminess of her walk. Her eyes were dark craters in her smooth blanched face.

  “Hello hello hello,” she said. “Hello hello.” She noticed the gun in my hand, without fear or curiosity: “Don’t shoot, cowboy, I give up.” Her hands jerked upward in a token gesture of surrender, then hung limp from her wrists again. “I absolutely give up.” She stood swaying.

  I put the gun away and took her by the elbow. Her face didn’t change. I identified its look of frozen expectancy. I had seen it on the face of a man who had just been struck by a bullet, mortally.

  “Unhand me villain,” she said without rancor; pulled away from me and crossed to the end of the bed where she sat down. She didn’t notice Mosquito until then, though he was lying practically at her feet. She nudged his leg with a red-tipped toe: “What happened to the nasty little man?”

  “He fell and hurt himself. Too bad.”

  “Too bad,” she echoed. “Too bad he isn’t dead. He’s still breathing. Look, he bit me.” She pulled the pajama collar to one side to show me the red tooth-marks on her shoulder. “He couldn’t hurt me, though. I was a thousand miles away. Ten thousand miles away. A hundred thousand miles away.” She was chanting.

  I cut in: “Where were you, Ruth?”

  “On my island, the island I go to. My little white island in the deep dark blue ocean.”

  “All alone?”

  “All alone.” She smiled. “I shut the door and lock it with a key and bar the door and fasten the chains and sit in my chair and no one can touch me. No one. I sit and listen to the water on the beach and never open the door until my father comes. Then we go down to the water and look for shells. We find the prettiest shells, pink and red and purple, great big ones. I keep them in my house, in a special room. Nobody knows where it is, I’m the only one that knows.” Her voice trailed off. She drew her knees up to her chin and sat with her eyes closed, rocking gently back and forth on a remote inward surge.

  The breathing of the man on the floor had changed for the better, easing and slowing down. His eyes were closed now. I went to the bathroom for a glass of water: Ruth’s clothes were scattered on the bathroom floor: and poured the water over Mosquito’s face. The little eyes snapped open. He gasped and spluttered.

  “Upsadaisy,” I said, and dragged him to a sitting position against the wall. His head hung sideways but he was conscious, his eyes pointed with malice. “You won’t get away with this, old man,” he whispered.

  I disregarded him, turned to the girl on the bed: “Have you seen Speed?”

  “Speed?” she repeated from a great distance. Her face was closed and smooth as a shell listening to its own murmurings.

  Mosquito struggled up onto his knees: “Don’t tell him anything, he’s a heister.” Which told me that Mosquito had something to tell.

  I bunched his tie and shirt-collar in both hands and lifted him against the wall. He hung limp, afraid to resist.

  “You tell me where Speed is, then.”

  He twisted his wet head back against the plaster, his eyes watching me from their corners. “Never heard of him.” His voice was thin, almost a rodent squeak. “Take your dirty hands—off me.” His face was purpling again, and the breath piped in his throat.

  “There’s no way out of this one.” I loosened the pressure of my fingers slightly. “I want Speed.”

  He tried to spit in my face. The bubbly white saliva ran down his chin. I tightened the pressure, carefully. He invited death, like a soft and loathsome insect.

  He struggled feebly, gasping. “Turn me loose.”

  I released him. He dropped onto his hands and knees, coughing and shaking his head from side to side.

  “Where is Speed?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” He crouched like a dog at my feet.

  “Listen to me, Mosquito. I don’t like you. I don’t like your business. Just give me a slight excuse, and I’ll give you the beating of your life. Then I’ll call the feds to cart you away. You won’t be back for a long time if I do.”

  He looked up at me through a rat’s-nest of hair. “You’re talking big for a hood.”

  “No. It’s what I’m going to do if you don’t take me to Speed.” I showed him my Special Deputy’s badge to clinch it.

  “I guess you win,” he said to the threadbare carpet. Slowly he got to his feet.

  I held my gun on him while he combed his hair and put on a green tweed coat. He blew out the alcohol lamp, replacing it in the drawer.

  The girl was still balanced on the end of her spine, rocking blindly. I gave her a shove as I passed her. She tumbled sideways onto the bed and lay as she had fallen, with her knees up to her chin, waiting to be born into the world or out of it.

  Mosquito locked the door. I took his key away before he could pocket it. He backed against the door, the malice on his face cance
led by fear into a kind of stupidity. The red corridor light shone down on him like a dirty little sun, scaled to the world in his head. His outstretched hand was questioning.

  “You won’t speak to the night clerk, you won’t even look at him. Is it far to Speed?”

  “He’s at Half Moon Bay, in a cabin. Don’t take me there. He’ll kill me.”

  “Worry about him,” I said, “unless you’re lying to me.”

  Behind one or another of the numbered doors, a woman cried out sorrowfully. A man laughed. Down the corridor, in the elevator, across the lobby, up the steep street to the empty square, I stuck to Mosquito like a brother. He walked as if every step he took had to be willed in advance.

  CHAPTER 28: There were clouds in the hills along the skyline route, obscuring the winding road and spraying my windshield with fine droplets of water. I used my yellow foglights and kept the wipers metronoming, but it was a long slow drive. Between the San Francisco limits and the bay, we passed no lighted houses and few cars. The city with all its lights had sunk behind us as if it had never existed.

  The man beside me was quiet. Occasionally he uttered a little moan. Once he said: “He’ll kill me. Speed will kill me.”

  “Small loss if he did,” I said to cheer him up.

  “He’ll kill you too!” he cried. “I hope he does kill you.”

  “Naturally. Is he alone?”

  “Far as I know he is.”

  “You’ll go up to the door. You’ll do the talking.”

  “I can’t. I’m sick. You hurt me.”

  “Buck up. I hate a whiner.”

  He was quiet again, though he still moaned occasionally to himself. We crept on under the smothering gray sky, through the gray cloud-drowned hills. The sun and the other stars had burned out long ago, and Mosquito and I were journeying for our sins through a purgatory of gray space.

  Eventually the road dipped below the cloudline. Below it to the right, a flat gray arm of the sea meandered among the hills like a slow river. The opposite bank was black with trees. I followed the shore for miles, losing it and coming back to it again as the road determined. In a narrow valley close by the forsaken shore, the road branched left and right.

  I stopped the car. “Which way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do, Mosquito. Bear this in mind: you’ll take your chance with Speed, or have the certainty of a Federal pen. Now which is it going to be? Which way?”

  “To the right,” he answered drearily. “It’s only about a mile from here.”

  We crossed a long low bridge and followed a gravel road up the opposite bank of the bay. After a while we passed a dirt road that straggled downward towards the landlocked water. “That’s it,” he said.

  I braked and backed, turning into the rutted lane. “How far down is it?”

  “Just around the curve.”

  I cut my lights, stopped short of the curve and set my emergency brake. “Get out and walk ahead of me. If you give him warning, I’ll drop you.”

  “Speed will kill me,” he said slowly and distinctly, as if he was stating a theory I had failed to understand. In the dim light from the dashboard, I could see the water shining in his eyes. I took my flashlight out of the glove compartment, and tested it on his face. It looked sick.

  “Get out.” I leaned across him to open the door, and crowded out behind him. I closed the windows and locked both doors.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “afraid of the dark. I never been out here at night.”

  “You’ll never go back if you keep this up. Now walk ahead of me.”

  He was clinging to the door handle. I pushed him upright with the revolver muzzle, and prodded him into the road. He lurched ahead of me.

  Below the curve the lane broadened into a small clearing. A cabin of rough-hewn logs sat in the clearing, one square lit window facing us. A man’s shadow moved there, growing until it covered the whole window. Then the light died behind it. There was a long dark car parked beside the cabin.

  “Call him,” I said to the man at the end of my gun. The flashlight was in my left hand.

  His first attempt was a dry gasp.

  “Keep moving and call him. Tell him who you are. Tell him that I’m a friend.”

  “Mr. Speed,” he cried thinly. “It’s Mosquito.”

  We were halfway across the clearing. “Louder,” I said in his ear, and jabbed him in the kidneys with the muzzle.

  “Mr. Speed.” His voice cracked.

  I pushed him on ahead of me. The door opened inward as Mosquito set his feet on the plank stoop.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice said from the deep inside shadow.

  “Mosquito.”

  “What do you want? Who’s with you?”

  “A friend.”

  “What friend?” The hidden voice rose in pitch.

  I’d got as far as I could with that approach. Even with tear gas, tommyguns and a police cordon, there is no way to take a desperate man without risking your life. I had an advantage over Speed, of course. I knew that he was still convalescing from Blaney’s bullet, and was probably gun-shy.

  I stepped around Mosquito. “The name is Archer. A Mrs. Henry Fellows”—I pronounced the name carefully—”hired me to look for you.”

  Before I finished speaking, I pressed my flashlight button. The white beam fanned the doorway. Speed crouched there, a massive figure with a black gun in his hand. We faced each other for a long tense instant. Either of us could have shot the other. I was so sharply aware of him, I felt his gun wound burning a hole in my own belly.

  The starch went out of him suddenly. Without seeming to move, he shifted from the offensive to the defensive. “What do you want?” His pale bright eyes looked down at his gun, as if it was the gun that had somehow failed him.

  “You might as well drop it,” I said. “I have you covered.”

  He flung it down in a gesture of self-disgust. It skittered across the rough planks toward me. Instinctively, Mosquito moved to retrieve it. I set my foot on the gun and elbowed him back.

  “Go away, Mosquito,” I said, watching Speed. “I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Where should I go?” He sounded both hurt and unbelieving.

  “Anywhere but San Francisco. Start walking.”

  “All by myself? Out here?”

  “Start walking.”

  He stepped off the porch into gray gloom. I didn’t waste a backward glance on him. “We’ll go into the house,” I said to Speed. “You better hold your hands on top of your head.”

  “You’re exceedingly masterful.” He was recovering his style, or whatever it was that kept him upright and made him interesting to women. On the shooting level he was a bum, as useless as a cat in a dogfight. But he had his own feline dignity, even with his hands up.

  I picked up his gun, a light automatic with the safety still on, and juggled it into my pocket, holding the flash under my arm. “About face, colonel. No false moves, unless you want a hole in the back to match the one in the front.”

  He turned in the doorway. I stayed close behind him as he crossed the room and relit the oil lamp. The flame steadied and brightened, casting a widening circle of light across the bare floor and up into the rafters. The room contained a built-in bunk, a cheap pine table, two kitchen chairs and a canvas deck-chair placed by the stone fireplace. A pair of new leather suitcases stood unopened at the end of the bunk. There was no fire in the fireplace, and the room was cold.

  “Sit down.” I waved my gun at the deck-chair.

  “You’re very kind.” He sprawled in the chair with his long legs spraddled in front of him. “Is it necessary for me to retain the hands-on-head position? It makes me feel ridiculous.”

  “You can relax.” I sat down facing him in one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Thank you.” He lowered his hands and clasped them in his lap, but he didn’t relax. His entire body was taut. The attempt he made to smile was miserable, and he abandoned it. He ra
ised one hand to shield his worried mouth. The hand stayed there of its own accord, brushing back and forth across his thin brown eyebrow of mustache. Its fingernails were bitten down to the quick. “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

  “We’ve seen each other. This is a comedown after the Oasis Inn.”

  “It is, rather. Are you a detective?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m surprised at Marjorie.” But he showed no emotion of any kind. His face was unfocused, sagging wearily on its bones. Deep lines dragged from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His fingers began to explore them. “I didn’t think she would go to such lengths.”

  “You hurt her feelings,” I said. “It’s never a good idea to hurt a woman’s feelings. If you have to rob them, you should try to do it without hurting their feelings.”

  “Rob is a pretty strong word to use. She gave me the money to invest for her. She’ll get it back, I promise you.”

  “And your word is as good as your bond, eh? How good is your bond?”

  “One week,” he said. “Give me one week. I’ll pay it back with interest gladly.”

  “How about now?”

  “That’s impossible. I don’t have the money now. It’s already invested.”

  “In real estate?”

  “In real estate, yes.” The pale eyes flickered. The exploring hand climbed up to them and masked them for a moment.

  “Don’t rack your brain for a story, Speed. I know where the money went.”

  He peered at me, still hiding behind his fingers. “I suppose Mosquito told you?”

  “Mosquito told me nothing.”

  “She tapped my phone at the Inn, then. The sweet sow.” The hand slid down his face to his throat, where it pinched the loose skin between thumb and forefinger. “Oh, the sweet sow.” But he couldn’t work up any anger. The things that had been done to him looked worse and more important than the things he could do in return. He was sick of himself. “Well, what do you want with me? I guarantee she’ll have her money back in a week.”

  “You can’t see over the edge of the next five minutes, and you’re talking about a week. In a week you may be dead.”

  A half-smile deepened the lines on one side of his face. “I may at that. And you may too. I certainly wish it for you.”