Trouble Follows Me

by Ross Macdonald

  I paid him his fare and some extra, and got out of the cab. I felt awkward and light as I walked up the steps with Halloran’s black eyes on my back, and knocked on the heavy carved door.

  A rectangle of face containing two small eyes appeared at a Judas hole. The eyes gave me a once-over, the Judas hole snapped shut, and the door opened.

  “What can we do for you?” the doorman said. He was pig-eyed and pig-bodied, shaped like a Japanese wrestler and as wide as the door. His accent was Minnesota Norska. I wondered automatically how deep my fist would sink in the swelling dough of his belly.

  I said I would like to see Madame Toulouse.

  “She ain’t home. Now if you want a good time we can do business with you. If you don’t want a good time we can’t do business with you.”

  I said I was crazy for a good time, and he ushered me through swinging glass curtains into a high wide room where the music was. It came from a piano and a guitar at the far end of the room, played by two cadaverous young men with shining black hair. The walls of the room, which must have taken up nearly the whole first floor, were lined with tables at which men sat drinking, some with girls on their knees.

  The center of the room was a dance-floor where the rest of the girls danced with each other or with whatever male partners they could get. The girls wore no clothes, except that some had colored plumes projecting from their powdered buttocks. One had a red feather. One had a blue feather. One had a green feather. These plumes wagged like languid tails as the girls jigged through the bored routine of dancing. The girls with male partners seemed less bored, if you did not look at their faces.

  “You can see, we got variety,” the doorman said. “White, black, brown. Blonde, brunette, redhead, fat, skinny, Mexican, Chinese. Anything you want, we got it. You pay the waiter for your drinks and you pay the girl when you take her upstairs. You take your time and you take your pick. That’s the way it works out best.”

  I sat down at an iron-legged table by the door and he retired ponderously through the glass curtains. They clicked behind him like unheeded admonitory tongues. The waiter, whose clean white coat insisted that the joint had class, came to my table and I ordered Mexican beer. The unattached girls began to converge on me like hens at feeding-time. Like figures in the dream of a naïve and hopeful hermit, they formed a half-circle about me, leaning forward and kissing the air with writhing carmine mouths and sliding pink tongues. In several languages they said the same thing, and their voices blended in an obscene cooing and twittering. Their breasts swung forward and the rouged tips looked at me like sullen eyes.

  I got out of my chair and they gathered about me, making their eyes swoon and sparkle, their blackened lashes flutter in mechanical glee. I moved to the door, wondering if the body of a woman would ever seem good to me again, and escaped through the glass curtains. The doorman was sitting in an armchair across the hall. He looked up at me in surprise. Halfway down the wide staircase Miss Green turned and started back up.

  I went after her. The doorman took me by the waist from behind, and before I could turn had locked my arms in a full Nelson which pressed painfully on the back of my neck. I struggled in his grip and got nowhere. My coat ripped at the shoulder seams.

  “Let him have it, Jake,” Miss Green said from the top of the stairs.

  He let go with his right hand but held me with his left. A small heavy object came down dully on the back of my head. My body reverted to protoplasm and my mind to darkness.

  When consciousness returned it came slowly and laboriously like an ambitious chunk of sentient organic matter climbing the stages of evolution from the original warm mud. I pulled myself out of the sucking black slime, the whirling waters that covered the earth, and lay eventually in a dry light place with my cheek on grass. But I found when I opened my eyes that it wasn’t grass. It was a pastel-green rug lit not by the sun but by electric light. I heard voices and tried to sit up. I couldn’t sit up because my wrists and ankles were tied together behind me.

  I raised my head from the rug and the blood beat at the base of my skull like an iron fist. What I could see of the room was bare, pleasant and strange. The only furniture I could see was the end of a chaise longue upholstered in bright rich silk, and a fragile table holding a slender vase of flowers. On the wall there was a wash-drawing of birds, with a conical white mountain in the background, done in faint and delicate colors. The rest of the wall was naked, except for a long curved sword in a gold-embossed scabbard which hung horizontally above my head.

  A woman’s voice was saying in a sibilant birdlike chirp: “It would not be wise to kill him here. I forbid it.”

  “I agree, Baroness,” Anderson said. “I absolutely agree. We’ll take him out to the ranch.”

  I craned my neck and saw at the foot of the chaise longue a small black slipper which flipped up and down impatiently on the tip of a silk-clad toe. “It will be necessary to transfer him with great discretion,” the voice chirped. “Attention must not be attracted to this house. It is safe now because we have been very careful. We will continue to be careful.”

  “We’ll put him to sleep again before we take him down,” Miss Green said. “I’ll go down and get Jake’s blackjack.”

  “No you won’t,” Anderson said. “I don’t want him to be sapped again. I don’t want his skull damaged. I’ve got a use for his skull.”

  “You are quite clever, Lorenz,” the bird-voice said.

  “I try to find a use for everything,” Anderson said complacently. “I’m glad Drake dropped in, as a matter of fact. Hector is too big.”

  “I am sorry you came here,” the bird-voice said. “At all costs we must avoid the serious attention of the police.”

  “It’s my business that’ll be ruined if they come here,” Miss Green said. “But I had to bring him. Jensen wasn’t safe in San Diego.”

  “You can say that again,” Anderson said. “I even spotted a plain clothes man at the border, but they don’t pay much attention to chauffeurs.”

  “It is not only your business that will be ruined if the police come seriously, Miss Toulouse,” the bird-voice said. “More intimate values than the financial are at stake.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Miss Green said. “Let’s get him out of here. And I still say sap him.”

  “We won’t sap him again,” Anderson said firmly. “It might leave a dent on his skull. We’ll put him to sleep with ether.”

  “Not my ether you won’t. I have a hard time getting that stuff. I damn near went nuts those last two days on the train.”

  “Get your ether,” Anderson said.

  “Like hell I will. You can gag him, can’t you?”

  “Get your ether,” Anderson said. There was the sound of a blow on flesh and a low female sigh. A woman’s footsteps crossed the rug behind me and left the room.

  “I don’t like to see you mistreat women,” the bird-voice said. “It is destructive of harmony. Perhaps one day you will be punished, Lorenz.” The speech left flat tinny echoes of menace in the room.

  I thought it was time I entered the conversation. “You’re damn right he will.”

  “Why, Ensign, it’s nice to have you with us again,” Anderson said. “Say, turn around and let me look at you. There’s nothing I like better than the face of an old friend.”

  He took me by the hair and pulled me around so that I faced into the room.

  “Don’t forget,” the bird-voice said. “You do not wish to damage his skull.”

  “Hell, the hair and scalp don’t matter.” By way of illustration he took hold of my hair again, lifted my head and shoulder a foot or so from the floor, and let me drop. “It’s just the skull I’m worried about.”

  The woman on the chaise longue whose voice was like a flat chirp had a tiny ivory-tinted face above which balanced carefully coiffed masses of dull black hair held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. There was something dainty and old-world about her, an air which was enhanced by her dress. This was a flowin
g robe of blue silk, full in the sleeve and skirt, gathered at the waist under a broad silk waistband. The ivory throat on which her head was poised was small and delicate. My attention was occupied by that pure throat. I was intensely interested in whether the Samurai sword on the wall could sever it in one stroke.

  I said: “Before long you’ll be out of a job, Baroness. We’ll tell you ahead of time where our ships are going to strike, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. Shall I tell you more?”

  The small woman on the chaise longue did not smile. From where I lay I could not tell whether she was a young girl or an old woman. “Be careful not to injure his bones, Lorenz,” she said. “His other tissues are more or less beside the point.”

  Anderson kicked me carefully below the ribs and below the pelvis. For a minute nothing was important to me but the fingers of pain which searched my body. Then I said, very carefully so as not to shout: “You will not be able to do anything about it because there will be no Japanese warships left. There will be no Japanese airforce left. Perhaps there will be no Japanese cities left. The Japanese islands will be a sad place.”

  “Are you tired, Lorenz?” the little woman said. He kicked me carefully in the lower part of the abdomen.

  I said: “How did you ever get into the big time, Jensen? I thought you were a small-time crook. You still have all the mannerisms of a pimp.”

  He kicked me again, but without enthusiasm. I decided that I had contributed my share to the conversation, and fell silent. My stomach muscles were moving like injured worms.

  Miss Green came into the room with a colorless glass bottle in her hand. There was a blue mark on her cheek under the red mark of the rouge, but she looked warm and excited. The hand which held the bottle trembled and the junk jewelry on her arm clinked merrily. Her step was quick and elastic.

  “My God,” Anderson said. “She’s been at the ether again.”

  “I just thought if you throw away this bottle like you did the last one,” said Miss Green. She executed several steps of an original pas seul. “Well, I just thought.”

  “Give me that bottle,” Anderson said.

  “Here it is, you fat stoat.” She tossed it to him. He caught it, took a single threatening step towards her, met the impassive gaze of the Baroness, and turned to me.

  He poured some of the ether on a handkerchief and applied it to my face. It scalded my mouth like fire or ice. I moved my head quickly and bit his wrist. He tore it from my teeth but I tasted blood. Then he held my head by the ears while the Baroness held the cloth to my face. I retired again into a universe of turning wheels.

  When I came to I was lying on the floor in the back of a car which was moving quickly over an uneven road. At least that was the hypothesis which fitted the facts that dirty fabric vibrated steadily under my face and bounced intermittently against my skull with explosive pain. I could hear the hum of the powerful motor. I could see no lights.

  I tried to flex my arms and felt the strain on my legs. My wrists and ankles were still tied together behind me. I began to rotate my right wrist in a quarter-circle within the loop of rope which held it. The rope was tight and rough and wore away the skin. I continued to rotate my wrist, working the rope down past the base of my thumb. I could feel warm blood on my hand. Perhaps it helped to lubricate the rope, which slipped gradually down towards my knuckles, wearing away the skin as it went. My hand felt as if it had been thrust in boiling water. I continued to work it back and forth within the loop. The rope slid over the thickest part of my thumb, and I jerked my hand free.

  With my right hand I went to work on the knots which held my other hand and my feet. The blood made the knots slippery and hard to open. I hoped that I was not losing a great deal of blood. I wanted to have enough blood left to kill Anderson.

  The knots had not been tied by a man who knew anything about knots. Once I got them started they loosened easily. My left hand came free without losing the skin. That was encouraging, because I needed one good hand. Inch by inch, so as to make no noise, I turned over on my back. I reached to my bent legs and removed the rope from my ankles. My hand simmered, my head rattled, and my stomach screamed. But I had accomplished a great deal.

  Supporting myself on my hands because my stomach would not bear the weight, I rose to a sitting position. From there I could see over the back of the front seat the upper half of a man’s head wearing a chauffeur’s cap. I knew that the head silhouetted against the reflection from the headlights must be Anderson’s because I hated it so much. I crouched forward and moved my arms, flexing and stretching them. When I was quite sure that they were able to do what I wanted them to, I flung my left arm over the back of the front seat and embraced Anderson’s neck.

  My stranglehold went on so fast and hard that his exclamation of surprise died in a gasp. But he had enough presence of mind to jam on the brakes. The car slewed sideways on gravel which machine-gunned the chassis and fenders, and came to rest. Without deliberately looking I saw that the road passed among mountains along the edge of an arroyo, and that there was a moon.

  I had Anderson’s throat in the angle of my left elbow and began to apply leverage with my right hand. But he had managed to get a gun in his hand, which he used to hammer my arms and my fingers. I let go with my left hand to grapple for the gun, but my injured right hand was not strong enough to hold him.

  He twisted out of my grip and struck me with the muzzle of the gun on the side of the jaw. I fell over into the back seat and before I could reach him again he was out of the car.

  He opened the back door and showed me the snout of his automatic. “You drive the rest of the way,” he said.

  A .45 automatic at three feet was unanswerable. I climbed in behind the wheel and he got in beside me.

  “If you go over fifteen I’ll shoot you in the base of the spine,” he said. “And stay in the center of the road. There won’t be any other traffic.”

  The black sedan crawled up the moonlit road, purring like a stroked cat. Anderson’s gun was thrust hard into the base of my spine. We came to a single-track dirt road which looped off to the right and ascended out of sight among the hills. The entrance to it was barred by a wire gate on a wooden frame.

  “We’ll get out and open the gate,” Anderson said. “If my gun loses contact with the small of your back, I’ll shoot. It will pay you to walk carefully.”

  I walked carefully to the gate, opened it, and walked carefully back to the car. The high slopes of the mountains were very beautiful in the moonlight, as beautiful as the white mountain in the drawing of the pale birds. I drove the car through the gate, and then we closed it behind us. The black sedan crawled up the narrow road among the hills. In a high valley flanked by mountains we came over the brow of a hill to a long low ranchhouse. It had a dim yellow light in the window.

  Anderson told me to stop the car and I stopped it. He told me to get out and I got out. He told me to walk towards the verandah and I walked towards the verandah. Hector Land was standing in the doorway waiting for us when we climbed the steps.

  “This is the man that killed Bessie,” Anderson said. “I want you to choke him to death, but be careful not to break any bones in his neck.”

  Hector Land’s right fist struck me in the face very quickly, twice before I fell.

  “You’d kill Bessie,” Hector Land said as he stood over me. “You and the white people like you, you’d throw her out of a job and drive her to whoring and foul her bed and then kill her. You’d kill us off in Detroit, you’d drive us out of the factories, you’d drive us out of the streets. You’d call us the filth of the earth but you’d love our women. You’d love our women and you’d kill us. Why did you kill Bessie?”

  He took me by the shoulder with his left hand and lifted me to my feet. There was a light foam on his lips. His right fist was cocked. I strained against his grip, but my shoulder was wedged in a vise.

  “Don’t hit him again, Hector. If you do I’ll shoot you. I’ve got to have
that body with no bones broken.”

  Land blinked at him stupidly and said in a changed dull voice: “I’m goin’ to break all his bones, Mr. Anderson.”

  “No you’re not. He’s about my size. We’ll dress his body in my clothes and put my ring on his finger. Then we’ll burn down the ranchhouse with his body in it. The police will think it’s me, and they’ll stop looking for me. But if any of the bones are broken they’ll be suspicous.”

  “Do you know who killed Bessie?” I said. “Anderson did. He killed Bessie because she was—”

  “Shut up,” Anderson said to me. His speech was clipped and low, but it had a raw edge of uncertainty. “One more word and I’ll shoot.” He took a backward step so that his face was in shadow. The outer rim of the circle of light from the doorway glinted dully on his automatic.

  “I want him to say his piece,” Hector Land said.

  Anderson’s gun moved slightly so that it included us both in its threat.

  “You know a gun can’t stop me,” Hector said.

  “Anderson killed Bessie because she was going to tell the police about Black Israel.” My words poured out so fast I almost babbled. I didn’t know when a bullet would put a period to them, but they were my only chance.

  “It’s a lie,” Anderson said. “He killed Bessie, and he’s trying to lie out of it. Stand back, Hector. I’m going to shoot.”

  Hector Land stayed where he was beside me. His face was blank and heavy, but his small black eyes shifted continually from Anderson to me and back to Anderson again.

  “Why should I kill Bessie, Hector? Did I kill the others? Did I kill Sue Sholto?”

  “I wasn’t even in Detroit,” Anderson said. His voice had risen a full octave as if fear had struck a tuning fork in his head. He still held the gun but it did not encourage him.

  “This man tricked you into doing his dirty work for him,” I said. “He pretended he wanted to help your people but when Bessie got dangerous to him he killed her. Are you going to let him go on using you, Land?”