The Drowning Pool

by Ross Macdonald

  I said: “You’re very active for an elderly man.”

  “Cut the comical chatter,” he said throatily. “I never killed a man, but by Jesus—”

  “I have, Amy. He kicked me in the head when I was down.”

  “Stop calling me Amy.” He backed away and held the gun higher. Without it he was nothing. But he had it.

  I quick-marched up the cracked and slanting concrete to the porch. It was cavernous and sunken, a place of shadows. He kept his eyes and gun on me while he fumbled for his key-ring and snapped back the lock. A woman’s voice spoke from the shadows then:

  “Is it you, Rico? I’ve been waiting for you.”

  He turned catlike from the door, shifting his gun from me to the darkness behind me. “Who is it?” His voice was jangled.

  I leaned on the balls of my feet, ready to move. The gun came back to me. The key-ring hung forgotten in the lock.

  “It’s me, Rico,” the voice from the shadows said. “Mavis.”

  “Mrs. Kilbourne!” Amazement raked his face, and his voice choked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mavis to you, tall and handsome. I haven’t been out by myself for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten how you looked at me.”

  She moved out of the shadows past me as if I wasn’t there, immaculate in a high-shouldered ermine jacket. Her left hand was behind her with the forefinger extended. It curled and straightened, pointed at the floor.

  “Be careful, Mrs. Kilbourne.” The man’s voice was wretched, straining to repress an impossible hope. “Please go home, Mrs. Kilbourne.”

  “Won’t you call me Mavis?” She brushed the side of his face with a white-gloved hand. “I call you Rico. I think of you when I’m lying in bed at night. Aren’t you ever going to give me a break?”

  “Sure I will, baby, only be careful. I’m holding a gun—”

  “Well, put it away,” she said with coy petulance. She pushed the gun to one side and leaned heavily on him, her arms around his shoulders, mouth on mouth.

  For an instant the gun wavered. He was still, enclosed by her in a white and perfumed dream. I raised my doubled fists and brought them down. Something snapped in his hand. The gun rattled on the floor. The woman went down after it, scurrying on her knees, and Rico went after her. My arms looped over his head, hugged him and lifted him. I held him suspended by the neck until his hands stopped scratching at me and dragged on the floor. Then I let him fall on his face.

  chapter 12

  The woman stood up with the gun. She held it in a gingerly way, as if it were a reptile. “You catch on quickly, Archer. That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “Unknown admirer,” I said. “I didn’t realize I had this fantastic power over women.”

  “Didn’t you? I knew when I saw you you were for me. Then I heard my husband telling them to bring you here. I came. What else could I do?” Her hands made a pretty gesture, spoilt by the gun.

  “Unlike Rico,” I said, “I’m allergic to ham.” I looked down at the man at my feet. His toupee was twisted sideways, so that the straight white line of the part ran from ear to ear. It was funny, and I laughed.

  She thought I was laughing at her. “Don’t you dare to laugh at me,” she said in a blind white rage. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

  “Not if you hold the gun that way. You’ll sprain your wrist and shoot a hole in the roof. Now put it away and kiss your boyfriend goodnight and I’ll take you home. I suppose I should thank you, too? Mavis.”

  “You’ll do as I say,” but her heart wasn’t in what she said.

  “I’ll do as I think best. You hadn’t the guts to tackle Rico alone, and I’m a tougher proposition than Rico.”

  She dropped the gun in her coat pocket and clasped her white silk hands below her bosom. “You’re right. I need your help. How did you know?”

  “You didn’t go to all this trouble for fun. Unwire my hands.”

  She slipped off the gloves. Her fingers unwound the thin steel wire. The man on the floor rolled onto his side, the breath whistling tinnily in his throat. “What can we do with him?” she said.

  “What do you want to do with him? Keep him out of mischief, or get him into mischief?”

  A smile brushed her lips. “Keep him out, of course.”

  “Give me the wire.” My fingers were nearly numb, pierced by shooting pains from returning circulation, but they worked. I turned the tall man onto his back, doubled up his knees, and wired his wrists together behind his thighs.

  The girl opened the door, and I dragged him over the threshold by the shoulders. “Now what?”

  “There’s a closet here.” She closed the front door and switched on the light.

  “Is that safe?”

  “He lives here by himself.”

  “You seem to have cased the joint.”

  She touched a finger to her mouth and glanced at the man on the floor. His eyes were open, glaring up at her. Their whites were suffused with blood. His hair had fallen off entirely, so that his skull looked naked. The toupee lay on the floor like a small black animal, an infant skunk. Its master’s voice came thin between purplish lips: “I’m going to make bad trouble for you, lady.”

  “You’re in it now.” To me: “Put Tall and Handsome in the closet, will you?”

  I put him in under a dirty raincoat, with a muddy pair of rubbers under his head. “Make a noise and I’ll plug the cracks around the door.” He was still.

  I shut the closet door and looked around me. The lofty hallway belonged to an old house which had been converted into an office. The parquetry floor was covered with rubber matting, except at the edges where the pattern showed. The walls had been painted grey over the wallpaper. A carved staircase loomed at the rear of the hall like the spine of an extinct saurian. To my left, the frosted glass pane of a door bore a sign in neat black lettering: HENRY MURAT, ELECTRONICS AND PLASTICS LABORATORY.

  The woman was bent over the lock of this door, trying one key after another from the keyring. It opened with a click. She stepped through and pressed a wall-switch. Fluorescent lights blinked on. I followed her into a small office furnished in green metal and chrome. A bare desk, some chairs, a filing cabinet, a small safe with a phony dial that opened with a key. A framed diploma on the wall above the desk announced that Henry Murat had been awarded the degree of Master of Electronic Science. I had never heard of the school.

  She knelt in front of the safe, fumbling with the keys. After a few attempts she looked around at me. Her face was bloodless in the cruel light, almost as white as her coat. “I can’t, my hands are shaky. Will you open it?”

  “This is burglary. I hate to commit two burglaries in one night.”

  She rose and came towards me, holding out the keys. “Please. You must. There’s something of mine in there. I’ll do anything.”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary: I told you I’m not Rico. But I like to know what I’m doing. What’s in there?”

  “My life,” she said.

  “More histrionics, Mavis?”

  “Please. It’s true. I’ll never have another chance.”

  “At what?”

  “Pictures of me.” She forced the words out. “I never authorized them. They were taken without my knowledge.”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Call it that, but it’s worse. I can’t even kill myself, Archer.”

  She looked half dead at the moment. I took the keys with one hand and patted her arm with the other. “Why should you think of it, kid? You have everything.”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  The key to the safe was easy to pick out. It was made of brass, cut long and flat. I turned it in the keyhole under the dial, pressed the chrome handle, and pulled the heavy door open. I opened a couple of drawers filled with bills, old letters, invoices. “What am I looking for?”

  “A roll of film. I think it’s in a can.”

  There was a flat aluminum can on the upper shelf, the kind that was sometimes used for 16 m
m. movies. I peeled off the tape that sealed the edges, and pulled off the lid. It contained a few hundred feet of film rolled in a flat cylinder. I held the end frame up to the light: it was Mavis flat on her back in a brilliant sun, with a towel over her hips.

  “No. You wouldn’t dare.” She snatched the film from my hands and hugged it to her.

  “Don’t get excited,” I said. “I’ve seen a human body before.”

  She didn’t hear me. She threw the film on the linoleum floor and huddled over it. For a moment I didn’t know what she was doing. Then I saw the gold lighter in her hand. It flicked open and made sparks, but didn’t light.

  I kicked the film out of her reach, picked it up, replaced it in the can. She cried out and flung herself at me. Her gloved hands beat on my chest.

  I dropped the can in my pocket and took her wrists. “That stuff explodes sometimes. You’ll burn the house down and you with it.”

  “What do I care? Let me go.”

  “If you make velvet paws. Besides, you need these pictures. So long as we have them, Rico will keep his mouth shut.”

  “We?” she said.

  “I’m keeping them.”

  “No!”

  “You asked for my help. This is it. I can keep Rico quiet, and you can’t.”

  “Who will keep you quiet?”

  “You will. By being a good girl and doing what I say.”

  “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any man.”

  “Women, on the other hand, are extremely trustworthy.”

  “All right,” she said after a while. “You win.”

  “Good girl.” I released her hands. “Who is this Rico?”

  “I don’t know much about him. His real name is Enrico Murratti, I think he’s from Chicago. He did some work for my husband, when they put two-way radios in the cabs.”

  “And your husband?”

  “Let’s just talk about human beings for now.”

  “There are things I want to know about him.”

  “Not from me.” Her mouth set firmly.

  “Reavis, then.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “You were with him in the Hunt Club.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Pat Ryan.” And bit her lip.

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  “No. I know where he’ll go eventually, and I’ll dance at his funeral.”

  “You’re close-mouthed for a woman.”

  “I have things to be close-mouthed about.”

  “One more question. Where are we? It feels like Glendale to me.”

  “It’s Glendale.” She managed a smile. “You know, I like you. You’re kind of sharp.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I always use my brains to save my brawn. That’s how I got this bump on the cerebellum.”

  His long minutes in the dark had aged and mellowed Rico. The knuckle-taut youthfulness had sagged out of his face. He looked like what he was: an insecure middle-aged man sweating with fear and discomfort.

  I pulled him under the hall light and talked down at him: “You said something a while ago about making trouble for my client.” I nodded at the woman by the door. “Any trouble you make will be for yourself. You’re going to forget you saw her tonight. You’re not going to tell her husband or anybody else that she was here. Nobody. And she’s not going to set eyes on your pan for the rest of her natural life.”

  “You can cut the spiel,” he said tiredly. “I know where I stand.”

  I took the can of film out of my pocket, tossed it in the air and caught it a couple of times. His eyes followed it up and down. He licked his lips and sighed.

  “Flat on your back,” I said. “But I’m going to give you a break. I’m not going to beat you, though that would give me pleasure. I’m not going to turn you and the film over to the D.A., though that is what you deserve.”

  “It wouldn’t do Mrs. Kilbourne a lot of good.”

  “Worry about yourself, Rico. This film is solid evidence of blackmail. Mrs. Kilbourne would never have to take the stand.”

  “Blackmail, crap! I never took no money from Mrs. Kilbourne.” He rolled his eyes, seeking the woman’s glance, but she was fixedly watching the film in my hand. I put it back in my pocket.

  “No judge or jury would ever believe it,” I said. “You’re in a box. You want me to nail down the lid?”

  He lay still for fifteen or twenty seconds, his lean brown forehead corrugated by thought. “A box is right,” he admitted finally. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just keep your nose clean and stay away from my client. A young boy like you deserves a second chance, after all.”

  He showed vari-colored teeth in a shamed grin: so far gone that he was smiling at my jokes. I unwound the wire from his wrists and let him stand up. All his joints were stiff.

  “You’re letting him off easy,” the woman said.

  “What do you want to do to him?”

  She turned her eyes on him, gray and lethal under the heavy curtains of her lashes. Instinctively he moved away from her, keeping his back to the wall. He looked willing to be put back into the closet.

  “Nothing,” she said at last. It was one of her favorite words. But on the way to the door she stepped on the black hairpiece and ground it under her gold heel. The last I saw of Rico, he had his right hand flat on top of his scalp, utter humiliation on his face.

  We walked in silence to the nearest boulevard and caught a cruising cab. She told the driver to take her to The Flamenco.

  “Why there?” I said, when the cab was under way. “It’s closed by now.”

  “Not for me. I have to go back there anyway. I borrowed taxi-fare from the powder-room girl, and left her my bag for security.”

  “That’s quite a situation you have there. A diamond-studded bag, and nothing in it.”

  “Tell it to my husband.”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  “Oh no!” She moved against me. “You wouldn’t really?”

  “He’s got you frightened out of your wits. Why?”

  “You won’t ask me any questions, will you? I’m so tired. This business has taken more out of me than you think.”

  Her head touched my shoulder tentatively, and rested there. I leaned sideways, looking down into her face. Her gray eyes were crepuscular. The lashes came down over them like sudden night. Her mouth was dark and glistening. I kissed her, felt her toe press on my instep, her hand move on my body. I drew back from the whirling vortex that had opened, the drowning pool. She wriggled and sighed, and went to sleep in my arms.

  I dropped her half a block from The Flamenco, and asked the driver to take me to Graham Court. He needed directions. It was all I could do to give them to him. My brain and body had gone into a champagne hangover. Through the long ride back, the wearing business of retrieving my car, driving it home, opening and shutting the garage, unlocking the door of my house and locking it behind me, I stayed awake with difficulty. I told my brain to tell my body to do what had to be done, and watched my body do it.

  It was twenty after four by the electric alarm on the table beside my bed. Taking off my jacket, I felt for the can of film in the pocket. It was gone. I sat on the edge of the bed and shivered for two minutes by the clock. That made it four-twenty-two.

  I said: “Goodnight to you, Mavis.” Rolled over in my clothes, and went to sleep.

  chapter 13

  The alarm made a noise which reminded me of dentists, which reminded me of optometrists, which reminded me of thick-lensed spectacles, which reminded me of Morris Cramm: the man I had been trying to think about when I woke up.

  Hilda met me on the third-floor landing with her finger to her lips. “Be quiet now, Morris is sleeping, and he had a hard night.” She was blonde and fat and doe-eyed, radiating through her housecoat the warmth and gentleness of Jewish women who are happily married.

  “Wake him up for me, will you? Just for a minute?”

  “No, I couldn’t do that.” She
looked at me more closely. The only light came from a burlap-curtained french door that opened on a fire escape at the end of the hall. “What happened to you, Lew? You look God-awful.”

  “You look swell. It’s wonderful to see nice people again.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “To hell and back. Glendale, that is. But I’ll never leave you again.” I kissed her on the cheek, which smelt of Palmolive soap.

  She gave me a friendly little push that almost sent me backwards over the rail. “Don’t do that. Morris might hear you, and he’s awful jealous. Anyway, I’m not nice people. I’m a sloppy housekeeper, and I haven’t done my nails for two whole weeks. Why? Because I’m lazy.”

  “I’m crazy about your nails. They never scratch.”

  “They will if you don’t quiet down. And don’t think you’re going to flatter me into waking him up. Morris needs his sleep.”

  Morris Cramm was night legman for a columnist, and worked the graveyard shift. He knew everybody worth knowing in the metropolitan area, and enough about them to set up a blackmailing syndicate bigger than Sears Roebuck. To Morris, that idea would never have occurred.

  “Look at it this way, Hilda. I am searching for the long-lost son of a wealthy English nobleman. The bereaved father is offering a fantastic reward for the prodigal’s Los Angeles address. With Morris, I go halves. If he can give me the address, it will entitle him to this valuable gift certificate, bearing an engraved portrait of Alexander Hamilton and personally autographed by the Secretary of the Treasury.” I took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet.

  “You sound like a radio program. A couple of radio programs, all mixed up.”

  “For five minutes of his personal sleeping time, I offer ten dollars in cash. Two dollars a minute, a hundred and twenty dollars an hour. Show me the movie star that gets nine hundred and sixty dollars for an eight-hour day.”

  “Well,” she said dubiously, “if there’s money involved. They’re selling Beethoven quartets fifty per cent off down at the record shop—Only what if Morris doesn’t know the answer?”