The Way Some People Die

by Ross Macdonald

  “Around.” She drew herself together, shrinking in his shadow.

  “What about this man you saw?”

  She told her story, haltingly.

  He considered it. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? You junkies have funny dreams, I hear.”

  “I’m no junkie.” Her voice was strained thin by fright. “I saw the man come out of the water, just like I said.”

  “Was it Tarantine? Do you know Tarantine?”

  “It wasn’t Joe. The man on the beach was bigger than Joe. He had a smooth shape.” She giggled unexpectedly.

  Colton looked at me: “She know Tarantine?”

  “He sold her heroin.”

  The giggle ceased. “It’s a lie.”

  “Show her a picture of Dalling,” I said. “It’s what I brought her here for.”

  He leaned across his desk and took some blown-up photographs out of a drawer. I looked at them over his shoulder as he shuffled them. Dalling lying full-length in his blood, his face like plaster in the magnesium light. Dalling close up and full face. Dalling right profile, with the black leaking hole in the side of his neck. Dalling left profile, looking as handsome as ever, and very dead.

  One at a time, he handed them to the girl. She gasped when she saw the first one. “I think it’s him.” And when she had looked at them all: “It’s him all right. He was a neat-looking fellow. What happened to him?”

  Colton scowled down at her. He hated questions that he couldn’t answer. After a pause he said more or less to himself: “We’ve practically assumed that Tarantine killed Dalling. If it was the other way around, wouldn’t that be a boff?” He gave no sign of laughing, though.

  “If Dalling killed Tarantine, who killed Dalling?” I said.

  He looked at me quizzically. “Maybe you shot him yourself, after all.”

  Though Colton didn’t mean it seriously, the warmed-over accusation irritated me. “If you can take time off from making funny remarks, I want you to do something for me.” I emphasized the “me.”

  “Well?”

  “Call up the head of the Narcotics Bureau and ask him nicely to come over here.”

  The girl looked up at me sharply, her mouth working. I was threatening her food and drink and sleep, threatening to sink her island in the sea.

  “For her?” Colton snorted. “Maybe you need a rest, Lew. I’ll get a matron for her.”

  The girl had shrunk up small again, her thin shoulders curved forward like folded wings to nullify her chest. Matron was another word she feared. Her mouth worked miserably, but no words came. She gazed dully toward the open casement window as if she might be contemplating a running jump. I moved between her and the window. We were several floors from the street.

  “Yeah, send for a matron. Ruth doesn’t want to take a cure, but she needs it.”

  Colton lifted the receiver of his phone. The girl collapsed on herself, her head bent forward into her lap. The back of her neck was white and thin, feathered with a light soft fuzz of hair.

  When Colton had given his order and hung up, I said: “Now call Narcotics.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of heroin in my car. Maybe you want me to peddle that elsewhere along with my Fahrenheit, you lousy phrasemonger.”

  For the first time in my experience, Colton blushed. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  CHAPTER 30: It was late afternoon when I drove up the hill to Dowser’s house for the third and last time. The guard at the gate had changed, but it was the same shotgun, its double muzzle watching me like a pair of binoculars. After the usual palaver and frisking, I was admitted to the sacred portals. My gun was locked in the glove compartment of the car, along with the can of heroin and Speed’s automatic and Mosquito’s knife.

  Sullivan, the curly-headed Irishman, met me at the door. His face was sunburned fiery red.

  “Have a nice time in Mexico?” I asked him.

  “Rotten. I can’t eat their rotten food.” He looked at me sullenly, as if he could smell policeman on my clothes. “What do you want?”

  “The boss. I phoned him, he knows I’m coming.”

  “He didn’t say nothing to me.” Sullivan was jealous.

  “Maybe he doesn’t trust you.”

  He gazed at me blankly, his slow brain taken by the plausibility of my suggestion.

  “Let’s get in to the boss,” I said. “He’s very eager to see me. I think he wants to offer me your job.”

  Dowser and his blonde were playing two-handed canasta in the patio. They were in the middle of a hand when I stepped out through the French doors, and Dowser was losing. The woman had half a dozen melds on the table; Dowser had nothing down. He was so intent on the cards in his hand that he didn’t look up.

  She did, though. “Why, hello, there,” she said to me. She was looking very pleased with herself in a strapless white bathing suit that justified her pleasure.

  “Hello.”

  Dowser grunted. With infinite reluctance, he disengaged a king of hearts from the fan of cards in his hand and tossed it onto the pile.

  “Ha!” she cried. “I was holding out a pair.” And she reached for the pile of discards.

  Dowser was quicker. He snatched up the king of hearts and tucked it back in his hand: “I didn’t mean to give you a king. I thought it was a jack.”

  “The hell you thought it was a jack,” she said. “Give me back my king.” She grabbed for his hand across the table, and missed.

  “Settle down, Irene. I made a mistake. You wouldn’t want to take advantage of me because my eyes are bothering me, would you now?”

  “Take advantage of him, he says!” She slapped her cards on the table, faces up, and rose from her chair. “Why should I try to play cards with a damn cheat? It should happen to you what happened to Rothstein.”

  He crouched forward, heavy arms on the table: “Take that back.”

  The righteous indignation drained out of her suddenly. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, Danny. I was only talking, that’s all.”

  “You talk too friggin’ much. You get your mouth washed out with something stronger than soap.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “You want to finish the game?”

  “Nah!” He stood up, wide and pudgy in his bathrobe. “Why should I play you for it when I can take it any time I want? Beat it, Irene.”

  “If you say so.” She transported her physical equipment through the French doors and out of sight.

  Dowser threw down his cards and turned to me. “Psychiatry! That’s what you got to use on them. Psychiatry! Sullivan, you can beat it too.”

  Sullivan departed with a backward unwanted glance. I sat down across the table from Dowser and looked him over. He took a few strutting paces on the patio tiles, his arms folded across his chest. With his swollen body wrapped in a white beach robe, he reminded me a little of a Roman emperor sawed off and hammered down. It was strange that men like Dowser could gain the power they had. No doubt they got the power because they wanted it so badly, and were willing to take any responsibility, run any risk, for the sake of seizing power and holding on. They would bribe public officials, kill off rivals, peddle women and drugs; and they were somehow tolerated because they did these things for money and success, not for the things themselves.

  I looked at the bold eyes bulging in the greased face and felt no compunction at all for what I was going to do to him.

  “Well, baby?” When he smiled, his thick lower lip protruded. “You said you got something for me?” He sat down.

  “I couldn’t be very definite over the phone. It might be tapped.”

  “Uh-uh. Not any more. But that’s showing good sense.”

  “Speaking of your phone, I’ve been intending to ask you: you said a woman called you on Tuesday morning, and told you that Galley Tarantine was home at her mother’s.”

  “That’s right. I talked to her myself, but she wouldn’t say who she was.”


  “And you haven’t any idea?”

  “No.”

  “How would she know your number?”

  “You’ve got me. She may have been a friend of Irene’s, or one of the women the boys have on the string.” He moved restlessly, brushing his rosebud ear with the tips of his fingers. “You said you had something for me, baby. You didn’t say you wanted to come up and ask me a slew of questions.”

  “That was the only question.—You offered me ten grand for Tarantine.”

  “I did. You’re not going to try and tell me you got him stashed someplace.” He gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them absently. In spite of the swollen displaced bones in the knuckles, his touch was delicate.

  “Not Tarantine,” I said. “But it wasn’t really Tarantine you wanted.”

  “Is that so? Maybe you can tell me what I really wanted.”

  “Maybe I can. Joe was carrying a tobacco can. It didn’t have much tobacco in it, though.”

  His gaze was sticky on my face. “If I thought you heisted it from Joe,” he said, “you know what I’d do to you, baby?” He picked up one card and tore it neatly in half.

  “I know it, and I didn’t. Joe sold it to a third party.”

  “Who?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I have it. Joe got thirty thousand for it. I’m not so greedy.”

  “How much?”

  “Make a bid. You offered ten for Joe. He’s in the deep freeze somewhere, out of my reach. But the heroin is worth more.”

  “Fifteen,” he said. “I’ve already paid for it once.”

  “I’ll take it. Now.”

  “Don’t rush me. Fifteen grand is a lot of green. I got to be sure you’re giving me the McCoy. Where’s the stuff?”

  “The money first,” I said.

  He half-lowered the thick eyelids over his bulging eyeballs, and the sharp pink point of his tongue did several laps around his mouth. “Whatever you say, baby. Wait here for a minute. And I mean in this chair.”

  I sat there for ten minutes, keenly aware that my skin was in one piece and might not be for long. I dealt myself a few poker hands, and got nothing worth betting on. When Dowser returned, he had changed to soft flannels. Blaney and Sullivan were with him, one at either elbow. The three made a curious picture as they advanced across the patio, like a fat powerful shark attended by a pair of oversize scavenger fish. Dowser had money in his hand, but it gave off a fishy smell. I saw when he came up to me that the money consisted of thousand-dollar bills.

  He tossed them on the table: “Fifteen, count ’em.”

  Blaney and Sullivan watched me count the money as if it were edible and they were starving. I put it in my wallet.

  “Not so fast,” Dowser said. “I want a look at the stuff, that’s natural.”

  “You can roll in the stuff. It’s in the glove compartment of my car. Shall I go and get it?”

  “I’ll do that.” He held out his hand for my keys.

  I sat some more, with Blaney and Sullivan looking down at me. To indicate my general carefreeness, I laid out a hand of solitaire on the tabletop. When I tried to play it, though, the numbers on the cards didn’t make sense. Blaney and Sullivan were perfectly silent. I could hear the tiny lapping of the swimming pool, then Dowser’s footsteps coming back through the house. The wallet in my hip pocket felt heavy as lead.

  Dowser was smiling his canine smile. Gold-capped molars gleamed in the corners of his mouth. Blaney and Sullivan stepped apart so that he could come between and ahead of them.

  “It’s the McCoy,” he said. “Now tell us where you got it. That’s included.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Think again.” His voice had softened, and he was still smiling. His lower lip stuck out far enough to stand on. “You got about ten seconds.”

  “Then what?”

  He clicked his teeth with a sound like a pistol hammer. “Then we start over again. Only this time you got nothing to sell me. Just information is all. You were up in Frisco last night. There’s a tag from the Union Square parking lot on your windshield. Who did you meet in Frisco?”

  “I’m the detective, Danny. You’re stealing my stuff.”

  “I’ll tell you who it was,” he said. “Gilbert the Mosquito, am I right?”

  “Gilbert the who?”

  “Brighten up. You’re dumb, but not that dumb. Mosquito worked for me till he set up for himself. He was peddling in Frisco.”

  “Was?” I said.

  “I said was. They found him on the road near Half Moon Bay this morning. Killed. A hit-run ran him down.”

  “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow.”

  “And what do you know, I find his knife in your car.” He brought the spring-knife out of his jacket pocket. “Recognize it? It’s got his initials on the handle.” He handed it to Blaney, who nodded his head.

  “I took it away from him when he tried to knife me.”

  Dowser grinned. “Sure, it was self-defense. You laid him out in the road and ran over him in self-defense. Don’t get me wrong, he got what was coming to him, and you did me a favor when you did it. But I’m in business, baby, you got to realize that.”

  “Selling old knives?” I said.

  “Maybe you’re not so dumb. You catch on pretty fast.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Pass the lettuce, huh?”

  Blaney and Sullivan showed their guns. I stood up, raising my hands. This was the moment I had been living over and over for the past half-hour. Now that it was happening, it seemed hackneyed.

  “You dirty double-crossers,” I said from the script I had written in my head.

  “Come on now, don’t be like that. You sold me something valuable of mine, I sell you something valuable of yours. It’s just that I’m smarter than you are.” He said it with deep sincerity. “I’ll mail you the knife some time, if you’re sweet about things. Make trouble, though, and I’ll deliver it in person.” He dropped it back in his pocket, and reached around me. My wallet was lighter when he replaced it on my hip.

  “Double-crossing dip.” I counterfeited anger, but I was inwardly relieved. If Dowser hadn’t dreamed up something to pin on me, he might have thought it necessary to kill me. It was the chance I had to face from the beginning.

  Dowser’s pleasure was more obvious than mine. His face was shining with it. “Where would Mosquito get thirty grand? The sprout was strictly small-time for my money. Or maybe that was just part of the spiel. Maybe he used the knife on Joe, huh, and didn’t need thirty grand?”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  “You still around?” He pantomimed surprise, and his gunmen smiled dutifully over their guns. “You can go now. Remember, you go quiet and stay sweet. I’m holding on to the knife for you.”

  Blaney and Sullivan escorted me to the car. In order to keep their minds occupied, I swore continuously without repeating myself. The guns were missing from the glove compartment. The guard at the gate held his shotgun on me until I was out of sight. Dowser was careful.

  A quarter mile south of the private road, two black sedans, unmarked, were parked on the left side of the highway. Peter Colton was beside the driver of the lead car. The other eleven men were strangers to me.

  I U-turned illegally under the eyes of twelve policemen, local and Federal, and stopped by the lead car.

  “He has the can,” I told Colton, “probably in his safe. Do you want me to go in with you?”

  “Dangerous and unnecessary,” he snapped. “By the way, they found Tarantine’s body. He was drowned all right.”

  I wanted to ask him questions, but the black cars started to roll. Two cars coming from the other direction joined them at the entrance to the private road. All four turned up toward the hilltop where Dowser lived, not forever.

  CHAPTER 31: The Pacific Point morgue was in the rear of a mortuary two blocks from the courthouse. I avoided the front entrance—white pseudo-Colonia
l columns lit by a pink neon sign—and went up the driveway at the side. It curved around the back, past the closed doors of the garage, and led me to the rear door. Callahan was smoking a cigarette just outside the door, his big hat brushing the edge of the brown canvas canopy. A pungent odor drifted through the open door and disinfected the twilight.

  He showed me the palm of his hand in salutation. “Well, we found your man. He’s not much good to anybody, in his condition.”

  “Drowned?”

  “Sure looks like it. Doc McCutcheon’s coming over to do an autopsy on him soon as he can. Right now he’s delivering a baby. So we don’t lose any population after all.” A smile cracked his weathered face as dry heat cracks the earth. “Want to take a look at the corpus?”

  “I might as well. Where did you find him?”

  “On the beach, down south of Sanctuary. There’s a southerly current along here, about a mile an hour. The wind blew the boat in fast, but Tarantine was floating low in the water and the current drifted him further south before the tide brought him in. That’s how I figure it.” His butt pinwheeled into the gathering darkness, and he turned toward the door.

  I followed him into a low deep room walled with bare concrete blocks. Five or six wheeled tables with old-fashioned marble tops stood against the walls. All but one were empty. Callahan switched on a green-shaded lamp that hung above the occupied table. A pair of men’s feet, one of them shoeless, protruded from under the white cotton cover. Callahan pulled the cover off with a sweeping showman’s gesture.

  Joe Tarantine had been roughly used by the sea. It was hard to believe that the battered, swollen face had once been handsome, as people said. There was white sand in the curled black hair and white sand on the eyeballs. I peered into the gaping mouth. It was packed with wet brown sand.

  “No foam,” I said to Callahan. “Are you sure he drowned?”

  “You can’t go by that. And those marks on his face and head are probably posthumous. The stiffs all get ’em when the surf rolls ’em in on the rocks.”

  “You have a lot of them?”

  “One or two a month along here. Drownings, suicides. This is a plain ordinary drowning in my book.”