Trouble Follows Me

by Ross Macdonald

  “That was hardly a fair blow,” he said. His eyes were no longer calm. They were shining with malice. “I warned you to avoid violence, Mr. Drake.”

  “I’ll show you a fair blow if you’ll lower that gun. Maybe I will anyway.”

  “This gun is attuned to your aura, Mr. Drake. If you approach it it will go off.”

  There was a slight click behind me and Laura Eaton said: “I have you covered. Drop that gun.”

  Gordon’s eyes did not move from me but his whole body tightened.

  “I’ll count to three before I shoot,” she said. “One.”

  He turned the gun in his hand and handed it to me. “This is a ridiculous situation,” he said.

  “Not as ridiculous as it’s going to be,” I said. “Miss Eaton, will you call the police.”

  “You needn’t bother,” Gordon said. “I am the police.”

  “You change identities with breath-taking rapidity. Go ahead, Miss Eaton. I’ve got him covered now.”

  Gordon reached for his hip pocket.

  “Keep your hands in sight,” I said sharply. “Put them on your head.”

  “Very well, if that appeals to your boyish sense of fun.” He raised his hands, grinning at me sardonically. “Take my wallet out of my left hip pocket. You’ll find my identity card in it.”

  I circled around him with his body at the hub of my line of fire and secured his wallet. It contained a card which identified him as Chester Gordon, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I felt cheated, doubtful and angry. My melodrama had descended into farce, and all the wasted adrenalin turned sour in my veins.

  “I’m sorry to have spoiled your game of cowboys and Indians,” Gordon said acidly. “Now put down that gun, or it may get you into trouble.”

  “You could have stolen this FBI card,” I said uncertainly.

  “Put down that gun,” he said with authority. “Hefler wouldn’t like it if you shot me by accident.”

  I remembered the smooth-talking red-haired man in the FBI office on Lafayette Street. “Are you working for Hefler?”

  “I could arrest you for assaulting me, Mr. Drake. You’ve acted like a damn fool.”

  I lowered the gun. He took his hands from his head and stroked his bruised jaw.

  “I’m not in a mood for apologizing,” I said bitterly. “If you had taken me into your confidence—”

  “We don’t take the general public into our confidence when we’re working on a case.”

  “God damn it, there wouldn’t be any case if it weren’t for me!”

  “I’d be just as happy,” Laura Eaton said, “if you men wouldn’t stage another brawl in my living-room. We’re all three on the same side, aren’t we?”

  Gordon said, “Excuse me.”

  Further recriminations rose from my wounded feelings to my lips: If you had cooperated with me we might have been able to save Hatcher, we might have been able to trap Anderson. But I swallowed them and held my tongue. I could see his point. An investigator of murder and espionage had to work in secrecy, especially in the cramped intimacy of a train.

  I said, “Excuse me,” to Laura Eaton. To Gordon: “What were you doing on the train? You weren’t checking up on me, by any chance?”

  “I was there partly to protect you. Two deaths had coincided with your presence. It looked as if the trouble was following you. After Hatcher died I was certain of it.”

  I couldn’t resist saying: “Your protection didn’t do me much good. Nor Hatcher.”

  “I could hardly serve as your food-taster, Mr. Drake. Nor am I ubiquitous.”

  “You’re ubiquitous enough to suit me. What brought you here tonight?”

  “After Hatcher was killed, my suspicions narrowed on Anderson. I did my best to shadow him. When you jumped me at the door of the smoking-compartment last night I think he caught on. He got off the train at Gallup and I followed him, but not fast enough. He took the only available taxi to Albuquerque, and I had to wait for the train to leave. When I got to Albuquerque he had already gone.

  “I traced him to the airfield and found that he had chartered a plane to Los Angeles. I took the first commercial flight but when I got to L.A. there was no trace of him there. Like you, I got the idea that he might have come to Santa Barbara to intercept Hatcher’s letter to Miss Eaton. I flew up here at noon and found that he had. He landed at the Santa Barbara airport this morning, and disappeared. Only Miss Eaton has seen him since. The local police informed me of the entry into her house this afternoon. Since then I’ve been watching this house. The local police are watching the roads in and out of town.”

  “I didn’t realize I had a bodyguard,” Laura Eaton said. “It feels nice. I don’t know as much about handling a gun as I pretended to.”

  “Our organization exists for the protection of the public,” Gordon said sententiously.

  “I suppose you know all the circumstances of Bessie Land’s death?” I said.

  Laura Eaton leaned forward in her seat and looked at me curiously, but had enough character to hold her tongue.

  “I’ve been over the evidence with Hefler,” Gordon said. “As a matter of fact, I examined the cadaver.”

  “Do you agree with the police that it was suicide?”

  “No, I don’t. Some of those municipal police are textbook-ridden. They’ve learned that hesitation-marks are often associated with suicide, so whenever they see a hesitation-mark they jump to the conclusion that it’s suicide. In this case, a more likely hypothesis is that Bessie Land was murdered while in an alcoholic coma. The tissues of her brain were saturated with alcohol.”

  “I saw her a couple of hours before she died. She was terribly drunk then.”

  “Exactly. It’s quite likely that the killer hesitated in the act of murder and made a shallow cut in her throat before he could gather enough courage to complete the act. Alcohol is an anaesthetic, and Bessie wouldn’t necessarily be aroused. That’s one way of accounting for the hesitation-mark. Another way, and I consider this more probable, is that it was deliberately inflicted to make the murder look like suicide. That would call for almost surgical coolness, and for some knowledge of medico-legal doctrine. But I think the criminals we’re dealing with are cool enough and intelligent enough. Besides, murder arranged to look like suicide fits in with the previously established pattern.”

  “You mean Sue Sholto’s murder?”

  “Sue Sholto’s murder?” Laura Eaton said in a shocked whisper.

  “There have been three murders,” Gordon said. “Your friend Hatcher was the third.”

  Laura Eaton’s face became pale and her body seemed to grow smaller. She put her hands over her face.

  “You spoke of criminals,” I said. “In the plural.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that we’re up against an organization—”

  “Black Israel?”

  “Black Israel is part of the organization, or associated with it. I got a wire when the train stopped in Kansas City. They’ve picked up the Negro who was sitting beside Bessie Land the night she was killed—”

  “I knew he had something to do with it.”

  “He didn’t kill her,” Gordon said. “He proved that he remained in the Paris Bar and Grill continuously until after 2 A.M., and she was dead long before that. But he is a member of Black Israel. He broke down and confessed.”

  “Are the Japs behind it?”

  “If they are, he doesn’t know, or won’t admit it. He did admit that Black Israel takes a passive-resistance stand on the war effort. As a matter of fact, his own draft status was not what it should be. That’s the charge we’re holding him on. He’s given us some leads, and we’re rounding up the leaders. Hector Land was a minor leader and a comparatively recent member, he said. And he mentioned a white man who supplied Black Israel with funds for propaganda purposes.”

  “Anderson.”

  Gordon leaned back and lit a cigarette. “I think so.” There was still tension between us, li
ke an electric arc whose contact points were my sore knuckles and Gordon’s bruised jaw. I said sharply: “If you thought so, why didn’t you arrest him on the train?”

  His black eyes gave me a cold superior stare. “For the simple reason that I had no legal evidence against him. You don’t seem to realize how the police must work in a democratic country, Drake. During this war, our Bureau has watched known criminals for as long as two or three years without acting to arrest them. Watched them every minute of every day for years, waiting for something to give them away. In the end, something always does. A slip of the tongue, an error in planning, a chance meeting—”

  “It was the chance meeting with Hatcher that gave Anderson away,” I said. “Hatcher said he knew Anderson, or at least implied it.”

  “That may be so. Perhaps his letter will give us the clue we need, the reason for his death.”

  Laura Eaton said: “Goodness, I could do with a cup of coffee. My head’s amply spinning. What about you gentlemen?”

  We said we would, and she started for the kitchen. Before she disappeared Gordon said: “What time is your morning mail delivery?”

  “Usually about nine o’clock. Do you think he’ll be back?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a tricky customer. He may be too wary to try it again. I’m going to wait and find out.”

  “I’m going to wait, too,” I said. “If I may borrow Miss Eaton’s chesterfield and gun for the rest of the night.”

  “You may,” she said from the kitchen door. In a minute there was the sound of water rushing from a faucet into a coffee percolator.

  We waited in silence for a while. My anger had drained away leaving dregs of shame in my system, and some alarm at my temerity. I felt considerable awe of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I realized how easily he could have shot me.

  My glance fell on an electric record-player beside a lamp in the corner. The albums of records in its cabinet switched my mind to a track that it had been following earlier that day. I said:

  “I realize that you have a low opinion of my investigative talents. I realize that you’re somewhat justified, and that the smartest thing I’ve done was to go to the FBI. But I have an idea that I think you should hear.”

  “It was partly my fault that we worked at crosspurposes,” he admitted. “But I don’t see how it could have been helped. What’s your idea?”

  “It’s nothing better than a hunch. It may be completely screwy. Hefler must have told you that secret information was leaking out of Hawaii to the enemy. At least that’s what I was told.”

  “I knew it before Hefler told me. We’ve known about it for a couple of months.”

  “But you haven’t been able to put your finger on the leak. Teddy Trask, the magician who put on an act in the club car that first afternoon, told me about a code which he and his partner had developed—”

  “I heard him talking about it. I was there.”

  “That’s right, you were. The principle of that code could be used by an enemy agent working in a commercial broadcasting station. Sue Sholto, the girl who was hanged—”

  “I know about her,” he said impatiently. “How could it be used?”

  “Sue Sholto broadcast regularly from Honolulu, and there was nothing to prevent Japanese subs from picking up her broadcasts. She could have sent out information in the course of an apparently innocent program.”

  “Commercial broadcasts are monitored. We would have caught it.”

  “Not if she used a code like Teddy Trask’s. She could mark her records with a needle so that they’d give out a little click at prearranged intervals. The time elapsed between clicks would have a definite meaning. A monitor, if he noticed the sounds at all, would think it was nothing but a worn record.”

  “I admit that’s possible. But you’ve got nothing to go on.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you. I can’t check on it myself. But you can teletype your office in Honolulu and ask them to examine the record library in the radio station.”

  “It’s worth trying, I suppose. It sounds outlandish. But their system must be outlandish, whatever it is, or we’d have gotten on to it long ago.”

  Laura Eaton came back with coffee and sandwiches. Gordon drank his coffee in a hurry and got up to leave:

  “I’m going over to the Marine Base and put that dispatch on the wires. It’s not likely that Anderson will come back before morning anyway.”

  “I hope he does,” I said. “I’ve gone to target practice on the fantail every afternoon for a year.”

  “When I come back I won’t come into the house. Lay low for an hour after the mailman gets here. Keep the doors and windows locked.”

  Laura Eaton retired to her own room. After turning out the lights I lay down on the chesterfield with her revolver in my hand and waited for morning. I dozed intermittently, held on the edge of sleep by coffee and fear. Morning came very slowly, leaking between the slats of the Venetian blinds, pale and bluish like watered milk. By seven o’clock the coffee and fear had worn off and I fell into a light sleep. I awoke with a start at nine when three letters plopped through the slot in the door and slid across the waxed floor.

  I crawled across the floor to the letters keeping my head below the level of the windows. Hatcher’s posthumous message was among them.

  I returned to the chesterfield with it, ripped open the envelope, and read at the end of the letter:

  “P.S.—I should have mailed this before I left K.C., I want it to get to you before I do or there’ll be hell to pay. But a bunch of the boys—remember Alvin S. and Donnie Hope?—kept me in a bar until the last minute and I didn’t have a chance. Anyway I got me a bottle to nurse on the train. I met a naval ensign who seems like a right guy and he had some good bourbon but it’s all gone now. He lent me this pen in case you wonder why the ink is different—I don’t know what happened to mine. Christ, it was the one you sent me, too.

  “There’s a guy on the train I don’t like the looks of. Remember that white man I told you about that was handling black market rice in Nanking when the Japs were there? This guy is either him or his brother, and I’m going to find out which. This guy is older and fatter but if it isn’t the same guy then it’s a case of identical twins. He says his name is Anderson. I don’t think he knows me.

  “Well, so long for now. You’ll hear from me when I get to L.A., and I’m going to do my damnedest to get to see you before I ship out. I should have written before but you know how it is. Bob and Dee send their regards. R.H.”

  12

  I WAITED for another hour, ready to shoot Anderson if he appeared. Punctually at ten o’clock there was the sound of feet on the verandah and I looked through the Venetian blind and saw Gordon at the door. Before I opened it to him Laura Eaton came out of her bedroom fully dressed. She had the marks of sleeplessness on her face.

  “I think we can assume that he won’t be back,” Gordon said. “But I’ll have the local police keep an eye on your house, Miss Eaton. Just in case.”

  “Did Rodney’s letter come?” she said.

  “I hope you don’t mind my opening it. There’s not much doubt that Anderson killed him. And dragged me under the train.”

  I handed her the letter, and Gordon read it over her shoulder.

  “May I have this letter?” Gordon said.

  “Of course. Won’t you let me make you some more coffee?”

  “Thank you. But I’ve got to get going.”

  “Did you send your message to Honolulu?” I said.

  “Yes. I told them to rush an answer. If you need to get in touch with me, call our central office in Los Angeles. I’ll give them your name. Where will you be?”

  “I’ve got a reservation at the Grant in San Diego. I’m going to San Diego today.”

  “I may see you there. I understand Hector Land’s ship is in San Diego, and I intend to go aboard her.”

  “So do I.”

  He shook hands with me and Laura Eaton and went out the d
oor. I wondered when he slept.

  I turned to Laura Eaton and asked if I could use her phone.

  “Certainly. There in the hall. Is this Anderson a spy, or something like that?”

  “Something like that. I’d tell you more, but the FBI asked me not to.”

  “I know as much as I want to,” she said. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

  I called the local airline office and added my name to their cancellation list. After breakfast with Laura Eaton I taxied out to the airfield on spec, and managed to get a seat on the next plane to Burbank. There I had a long wait for the San Diego plane. I called Mary’s hotel and was told that she had checked out, leaving me a message to meet her in San Diego.

  The afternoon seemed to be holding its breath. I paced the waiting room, tried to read a newspaper, saw Anderson and murder between the lines, got up and paced again. I tried to call Gordon at the FBI office but he hadn’t been there. I watched the planes from the north and east drop down unarmed out of the sky like harmless hawks. From one a female movie star emerged and grinned starkly at a starkly grinning flashbulb.

  I watched the soft-bodied stern-faced executives, the wealthy enameled women who commuted from coast to coast, the brass hats rubbing gold-heavy sleeves with casual soldiers and nonchalant seamen, sucked back from leave by the maelstrom in the Pacific. Parting couples embraced in the last agony of separation; reunited couples met and embraced in a similar agony of delight. I thought continuously of Anderson hustling somewhere across the southwestern states, sowing evil with jovial and expansive gestures.

  A few minutes before my plane was due I called Gordon again and this time I got him.

  “I’m glad you called,” he said. “But I thought you were going to San Diego.”

  “I’m waiting for my plane now. Any trace of Anderson?”

  “A man answering to his description registered at a motel near Delmar last night, under the name of Isaac Randall. He drove away in the direction of San Diego. Of course it may not be the man we want, but we’ll get Anderson. We’ve telegraphed his description all over the southwestern states, and the state police are on the lookout for him.”