Trouble Follows Me

by Ross Macdonald

  “You know Hector? Why yes, you’re a Navy officer, aren’t you? He’s in the Navy.” Eric was standing by her shoulder now. She turned on her stool to look up at him, resting her cheek on one hand. Her elbow overturned the glass in front of her.

  “Damn,” she said without feeling. “Another one, Bob.”

  “Haven’t you had about enough, Bessie?”

  “That’s what you always say. When do I ever get enough? Give me another one, Bob.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and filled a fresh glass for her. Mrs. Land paid him out of a black leather bag.

  Mary, who had missed nothing, didn’t miss the bag. “That’s good leather,” she said to me in a whisper. “Her clothes are good, too. Why on earth does she live like this?”

  “Too much drinking can explain anything,” I said. “But it requires explanation in turn.”

  “There’s a reason for everything, including drunkenness, I suppose.”

  “She isn’t so drunk.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Mary said, so loudly that the bartender cocked an ear. “I know females and female drunkenness, and she’s so drunk that you’ll get no sense out of her. We might as well go home.”

  “The young lady’s right,” the bartender leaned over the bar to say confidentially to me. “Bessie’s here every night and never leaves till we close the bar at midnight. She can take an awful lot, but not when she drinks absinthe. It puts you to sleep, see?”

  I looked and saw. She breathed slowly and heavily like a patient in anaesthesia. Her movements were sluggish and uncertain. Her eyes were clouded.

  “So Hector ran away from the Navy, eh?” she was saying. She laughed a laugh which descended the scale and died in a groan. “He always said he’d do it when the time came. Ever since he joined Black Israel.”

  A tall man in a tan fedora and overcoat who was sitting on her other side leaned towards her and said through thin purple lips: “You’re talking a lot of crap, Bessie. Hector wouldn’t like that, would he?”

  She straightened, and the last curves of laughter were smoothed out of her face. The piano-player began Suitcase Blues, and surprisingly she started to hum with the music in an alcoholic contralto. Before the song ended there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and when it did she put her head down on her arms and sobbed. Her glass rolled off the bar and crashed on the floor.

  Eric said to her back: “I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you think she should be gotten out of here?” I said to the bartender. “We’ll take her home if necessary.”

  “She’s all right if you don’t try to talk to her,” he said coldly. “Try to get her out of here before midnight and she fight like a wildcat.”

  “You will not come and see her tomorrow,” Helen Swann was saying to Eric. “You’ll stay in your own home for at least one day of your leave, I hope. And for God’s sake let’s get out of here and back to civilization,” she concluded petulantly.

  Civilization consisted of paying three times as much for our drinks and listening to the same kind of music played worse. After I agreed to go and see Mrs. Land the next day instead of Eric, Helen began to enjoy herself again, but Mary didn’t. We were in a smoke-filled basement, the most crowded because the most popular place in town, and it didn’t agree with Mary. After a couple of drinks she asked me to take her home.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said in the taxi with her head on my shoulder. “It’s the migraine again, and there’s nothing I can do about it except go to bed. The doctor said I’ll never get over it till I learn to face things I don’t like.”

  “I’m sorrier. We shouldn’t have taken you to Paradise Valley. It was pretty depressing, wasn’t it?”

  “We’ll paint the town red another night, eh?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’d love to,” she said in a tired little-girl voice.

  She left me in the lobby of her hotel and the elevator took her away. I felt depressed, partly because the evening had petered out but mostly because I felt responsible for Mary’s loss of spirits. I walked to the nearest bar and downed three double whiskies in the half-hour before closing-time. Then I walked home and went to bed.

  My tenant Joe Scott usually worked on his paper till two or three in the morning, and slept until noon. He wasn’t in yet when I went to bed, and when I got up he was still sleeping. Though there was something I wanted to ask him, I decided not to wake him. Perhaps after a good night’s sleep Bessie Land herself would be willing and able to tell me what Black Israel was.

  Bessie Land might have been willing, but she was not able.

  I took a taxi to Chestnut Street and alighted at the corner within sight of the Paris Bar and Grill. The neon sign was out, and under the light snow which had fallen during the night the streets looked peaceful and deserted. The snow was heel-packed on the sidewalks where the early risers had beaten their path to work, but it was after nine o’clock now and there was no one in sight.

  I raised my overcoat collar against the bitter gusts which whirled the snow between the buildings, and made my way to 214 Chestnut. Inside the tenement there were the sounds of morning life: babies crying and crowing, children playing, women’s voices raised in gossip and argument. But the hallway was cold and empty, and all the doors were closed to conserve the heat in the rooms. The third door to the left was closed like the others, and I knocked on it and waited. I might have waited forever if I hadn’t turned the knob and gone in.

  Bessie Land was flat on her back on the bed, staring at the discolored ceiling. One arm hung over the edge of the bed so that the hand half-rested on the floor. From the hand spread a pool of blood. The white mongrel puppy huddled there, licking the bloody hand.

  When I moved nearer, the dog crawled under the bed. I saw that Bessie Land’s throat was deeply cut. The pull of the skin had made a raw ellipse in her darkly glistening neck. A wavy-edged bread-knife rested on the quilt beside her head. She had her coat on, but it did not prevent her from being terribly cold.

  5

  THREE minutes after I entered my call at the pay phone in the hall, a police siren whooped in the distance. Another thirty seconds and it howled like a wolf in the street. Suddenly it stopped, as if somebody had shot it.

  A police lieutenant in a blue uniform and a man in civilian clothes came down the hall toward me with the air of men going to work.

  “My name’s Cassettari,” the Lieutenant said. “You didn’t touch anything, like I said?”

  “Not a thing. That is, I touched her face to see if she was cold. She’s very cold.”

  The man in civilian clothes, a middle-aged man with grey hair and a frosty bitter face, examined the body without disturbing it. “You said it, she’s cold,” he said. “Fast-frozen nigger wench. Any necrophiles around, might be a market.”

  “How long’s she been dead, Doc?” Cassettari said. He had a fleshy Mediterranean face. A thick dead cigar made the right side of his mouth sneer continuously. He used the cigar instead of a finger to point at things. His fingers were busy holding his hips.

  “Eight-nine hours. I’ll know better when I get her stomach out, if there’s any of it left after the liquor she’s been drinking. But take a look at the postmortem lividity.”

  I took a look. The hanging arm was heavy with stagnant blood.

  “Did she kill herself?” Cassettari said.

  “Fingerprints should tell. Where the hell’s Randy?”

  “He’ll be along. He had to pack his kit.”

  After a minute or two, the doctor said: “Yeah, she killed herself. There’s a hesitation mark.” He pointed a casual finger at the slashed throat. I saw the shallow cut above and parallel to the deep wound. “You don’t get a hesitation mark when a buck nigger cuts his whore.”

  I said: “There’s more to this case than a buck nigger cutting a whore.” I told them briefly why I thought so.

  “He’s been reading The Shadow,” Cassettari said.

  “He’s been
reading Dick Tracy, too,” Doc said.

  “This woman was murdered,” I said.

  “This woman was murdered, he says,” Doc said. “If she was murdered it’s our business to find out.”

  “I wouldn’t be meddling in your business if you showed any sign of knowing it.”

  “Wait till you see a few more bodies,” Doc said. “You won’t go off the deep end every time you see one. I wonder where the hell Randy is.”

  “If you won’t listen to me, I’ll find somebody who will.”

  “He’s going to bring pressure to bear,” Cassettari said.

  “Listen, son,” Doc said. “These niggers get bumped every day. This woman killed herself. Hesitation marks mean suicide, understand? You’re not in your field.”

  I said: “Maybe you’re out of your class.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” Cassettari said. “You talk too goddamn much. Wait a minute, give me your address and phone. I suppose you got to say your piece at the inquest.”

  I gave him what he asked for and went away, walking on legs made stiff by anger.

  After that I had to get my information about the case from the newspapers, and from Joe Scott. His paper was the tabloid type, and intended to give the case a play. (Next day I saw what they did with it: Navy Wife Suicides at Husband’s Desertion.) He told me that the bread knife which had cut Bessie’s throat bore only her own fingerprints, and those of Mrs. Kate Morgan. Kate Morgan pointed out that naturally her prints were on the knife, she used it for cutting bread. She was shocked and grieved by her roommate’s death, and besides she had a perfect alibi. A considerable time before midnight, when Bessie left the Paris Bar and Grill, Mrs. Kate Morgan had received a telephone call and had immediately gone to spend the night with a certain gentleman in a certain hotel. When she got home the police were there.

  Joe was interested in what Bessie Land had said about Black Israel, but didn’t know any more about it than I did.

  He stroked his long sharp nose and looked thoughtfully over his lunch. “You might try Wanless,” he said finally. “It sounds like another of these Negro societies, and he knows all about ’em.”

  “Simeon Wanless? The sociologist?”

  “That’s the man. He did a pretty good book on the genesis of the race riot. It must have come out since your time.”

  “It must have. I know Wanless by sight, though. Is he still in Ann Arbor?”

  “So far as I know.”

  Wanless still was. I found him two hours later in his little office in Angell Hall, which is the main building of the University of Michigan. He was sitting by himself swamped by papers, papers which were piled on his desk, on chairs, on the floor, and in the shelves which lined the walls. When I knocked on the half-open door he looked up with a smile, as if glad to have an excuse to rest his eyes.

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “My name’s Drake.” We shook hands and I sat down at his invitation. “I won’t try to tell you the whole story, but you may be able to help me with some information.”

  “My sole stock in trade. Information about what?”

  “I understand that you know a lot about the Negro population of Detroit.”

  “I’ve been studying them for years. A great people. You may have seen my book on the riots?”

  “Not where I’ve been. We think we’re lucky to get the pony edition of Newsmagazine the Weekly Newsmagazine.”

  “But that’s beside the point. It’s funny, isn’t it, how hard it is for an author not to mention his book?”

  “I was told you know a good deal about Negro social organizations. Did you ever hear of Black Israel?”

  “Why, yes. I believe I have. I’ve heard it mentioned, that is. I was never able to get inside of it, so to speak.”

  “It isn’t some sort of a Black Hand organization, is it?”

  “Good lord, no. At least I don’t think so. It’s a racist organization, standing for greater equality, more rights for the Negro, and so forth. There are a good many of them.”

  “So far as you know, then, there’s nothing criminal or sinister in Black Israel. Nothing that would lead to murder.”

  “I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Drake, my study has been chiefly concerned with organizations that might have had a bearing on the Detroit race riots. Black Israel wasn’t active at that time, to my knowledge. When I examined the situation I found that similar racist societies among the Negroes had little or nothing to do with precipitating the riots. They were a product of many factors: economic competition and jealousy, Negro progress coming into conflict with the reactionary attitudes of Southern whites who have settled in Detroit. Attitudes which were deliberately encouraged and inflamed by certain demagogues and, in some cases, at least, by enemy agents.”

  I had no time to listen to a lecture, so I said: “Thank you very much. May I use your phone?”

  “Certainly. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your specific question. Black Israel is rather mysterious in that it never gets in the limelight, though it may be quite important. I’d suggest that you ask some intelligent Negro what it’s all about. They know what’s going on among their own people.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try that.”

  I took the desk phone and dialled Eric’s number. When he answered I said: “Sam speaking. I’m in Ann Arbor, and I’m coming right over.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Angell Hall.”

  “I’m coming into town. Why not meet me at Davenport’s?”

  “Say in half an hour?” I hung up.

  Davenport’s is an ancient saloon and restaurant just off Main Street. I walked there and had ham on a bun and a bottle of beer while waiting for Eric. When he came in I ordered the same for him and another beer for myself. Then I noticed that he had a fresh Detroit newspaper in his hand, and a face which was partly very red and partly very white.

  “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me this over the phone?” he said when he’d sat down.

  “Dr. Wanless was sitting beside me. I thought you mightn’t want your interest in the case known.”

  “Yes. I see. What in hell does it mean? What sort of a thing are we mixed up in anyway?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The police are calling it suicide again. That gives us two suicides in two weeks, one on Oahu, one in Detroit. Maybe it’s a coincidence that I discovered the body both times. And maybe that coincidence has me unjustifiably convinced that there’s a connection between the two deaths. But by God I am convinced, and I don’t think either of them was suicide.”

  “I don’t know how you’re going to tie the two together and make a case out of them. You haven’t even got a real suspect.”

  “Hector Land was in a position to kill Sue. How many days ago did he leave the ship?”

  “Let’s see. Three. Four tonight.”

  “He could be in Detroit now. And there’s another thing. Bessie Land mentioned her husband’s joining Black Israel, and saying after that that he’d run away from the Navy.”

  “I remember,” Eric said. “What is Black Israel?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m bloody well going to find out. The man next to her at the bar practically threatened her to make her shut up. This morning she was dead. It could be that Black Israel is a sort of Maffia, and Hector Land one of its thugs.”

  “It could be that it’s as harmless as the Baptist Church. You seem to be making a great deal out of nothing at all.”

  “Two murders are not my idea of nothing at all. I admit that Wanless thinks Black Israel is harmless. But there’s one other thing, that I can’t help thinking is connected with the case.”

  “Now what?” Eric said wearily. He ordered two more bottles of beer.

  “Do you remember the conversation we had before supper the night Sue was killed?”

  “How enemy agents would be able to get information out of Oahu, you mean?”

  “And you remember what Gene Halford said, that informati
on actually was leaking out? I think that Sue’s death may be connected with that fact.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “She worked in a broadcasting station. She had access to means of communications—”

  “What damned nonsense!” Eric exploded angrily.

  “You didn’t let me finish. I’m not accusing her. She could have been approached by an enemy spy with a proposition, turned it down, and been killed to keep her quiet. I can’t explain the thing. All I’m trying to get at is that these deaths need more looking into. Are you with me?”

  “No,” Eric said stonily. “I’ve got a certain responsibility to my wife—”

  “I know. And two days left. All right, I’ll do what I can by myself.”

  I left Eric sitting with his half-finished bottle of beer and caught a train to Detroit. From the station I took a cab to the black town, then walked through bleak streets of slum houses, every second one of which had a service star in a window, to the Paris Bar and Grill. When I got there twilight was gathering like soot in the low sky over the icy roofs of the tenements.

  The booths inside were empty, but there were a few people at the bar, and the same bartender was there in the same greyish white apron. I walked up to the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender gave me a hard look but said nothing. I gave him a dollar for a forty-cent whiskey and told him to keep the change. Then I said:

  “It was a terrible thing that happened to Mrs. Land last night.”

  “Yeah.” His round black face set sullenly.

  “How did she act before she left here? Did she show any signs of depression?”

  “She was feeling lousy. She was dead drunk.”

  “There wasn’t anybody with her?”

  “Look, mister,” he said in a grudging whine. “I had the cops sitting in my lap this morning. I told them what I knew. There wasn’t anybody with her. How about letting me forget it?” He began to scrub the pock-marked surface of the bar with a wet rag. He scrubbed furiously, as if he were expunging all traces of the memory of Bessie Land.

  The front door opened and let in a gust of winter which swept the length of the room. The bartender looked over my head. There was a look in his eyes, a glazed look of surprise and warning, which made me turn. A tall thin Negro in a tan overcoat and tan fedora paused at the door, caught my eye, turned and went out.