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Authors: Ross MacDonald
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the weekend and didn’t come back whenshe expected to. Then somebody else broke in here and pried open her desk and removed various things, traces of her personal life: letters, address-book, telephone numbers—”
“You had no right to barge in here,” he said. “Even if you didn’t jimmy the door yourself, you’re breaking the law.”
“Your wife gave me permission to search the apartment.”
“What has she got to do with it?”
“Her sister is missing, she’s next of kin—”
“Where did you see her?”
“I drove her home from Meyer’s less than an hour ago.”
“Stay away from her, do you hear me?” he said in a rising voice. “Stay away from my house and my wife.”
“Maybe you better instruct your wife to stay away from me.”
I shouldn’t have said it. Anger shook and wrenched him. His gun swung up, and the barrel clipped my chin. My head snapped back against the wall. I heard plaster dropping down behind it. His tall figure blurred and swung sideways like a tree falling. My arm and shoulder struck the floor.
I got back onto my feet and wiped the blood from my chin with the back of my hand.
“You’ll probably regret this, sheriff.”
“Get out of here before I do something I’ll really regret.”
His long face slanting forward over the gun was like tortured bronze. His eyes were blind and empty.
I walked on remote legs to the open door. The radio music in the next cottage had been replaced by a manic voice asserting loudly that loneliness, fear, and unpopularity were things of the past, abolished by chlorophyll.
CHAPTER 9 :
Yanonali Street bent north at the city
limits to join a state highway. A pair of two-story stucco buildings stood in the angle of the roads. One was the El Recreo Pool and Shuffleboard Arcade. Men and boys brandishing cues moved in its smoky green light like heavy-footed spear-fishers walking on the floor of the sea. On the roof of the other building, a high-heeled slipper outlined in yellow bulbs hinted broadly at women and champagne gaiety. Some of the bulbs were missing.
The champagne was domestic and flat. Three girls, two weary blondes and a blue brunette, were waiting on the three end stools at the bar. Their drooping bodies straightened when I entered. They inflated their chests and opened their paint-heavy mouths in welcoming smiles. Assuming a high-minded expression, I passed them and went to the far end of the bar.
The room was shaped like a flat bottle with the narrow end in front. At the rear, beyond an empty dancing space, a deserted bandstand supported a silver-painted piano and a few music-racks like leafless metal trees. A big neurotic jukebox voice was crying out loud in an echo-chamber for love that it didn’t deserve, except from tone-deaf women.
Four youths in Hawaiian-print shirts were sucking on beer bottles in one of the rear booths. Each of the four had white peroxided forelocks, as if the same lightning had blasted them all at once. They looked at me with disdain. I had ordinary hair. I wasn’t atomic.
The man behind the bar wasn’t atomic, either. His face resembled a tired bullfrog’s. His jacket had once been white. His nostrils sighed at me when I ordered beer.
“How’s business?” I said politely.
He decapitated my bottle, savagely, and set it on thescarred formica between us. “If business improved five hundred per cent it wouldn’t even be lousy. Beer is the only order I get any more. You on the road?”
I said I was.
“There’s the life. I’d get out of here myself if I could. Wife and family, they hold a man down.” He let his shoulders slump and his jaw sag by way of illustration. “The last year, since the big shock, this place is as dead as King Tut.”
“The big shock?”
“The earthquake we had last summer. We took a beating from it, more ways than one. It scared the whole town crapless. I guess it did some people a lot of good. This was one wild town, brother. It ain’t so wild any more,
“You had no right to barge in here,” he said. “Even if you didn’t jimmy the door yourself, you’re breaking the law.”
“Your wife gave me permission to search the apartment.”
“What has she got to do with it?”
“Her sister is missing, she’s next of kin—”
“Where did you see her?”
“I drove her home from Meyer’s less than an hour ago.”
“Stay away from her, do you hear me?” he said in a rising voice. “Stay away from my house and my wife.”
“Maybe you better instruct your wife to stay away from me.”
I shouldn’t have said it. Anger shook and wrenched him. His gun swung up, and the barrel clipped my chin. My head snapped back against the wall. I heard plaster dropping down behind it. His tall figure blurred and swung sideways like a tree falling. My arm and shoulder struck the floor.
I got back onto my feet and wiped the blood from my chin with the back of my hand.
“You’ll probably regret this, sheriff.”
“Get out of here before I do something I’ll really regret.”
His long face slanting forward over the gun was like tortured bronze. His eyes were blind and empty.
I walked on remote legs to the open door. The radio music in the next cottage had been replaced by a manic voice asserting loudly that loneliness, fear, and unpopularity were things of the past, abolished by chlorophyll.
CHAPTER 9 :
Yanonali Street bent north at the city
limits to join a state highway. A pair of two-story stucco buildings stood in the angle of the roads. One was the El Recreo Pool and Shuffleboard Arcade. Men and boys brandishing cues moved in its smoky green light like heavy-footed spear-fishers walking on the floor of the sea. On the roof of the other building, a high-heeled slipper outlined in yellow bulbs hinted broadly at women and champagne gaiety. Some of the bulbs were missing.
The champagne was domestic and flat. Three girls, two weary blondes and a blue brunette, were waiting on the three end stools at the bar. Their drooping bodies straightened when I entered. They inflated their chests and opened their paint-heavy mouths in welcoming smiles. Assuming a high-minded expression, I passed them and went to the far end of the bar.
The room was shaped like a flat bottle with the narrow end in front. At the rear, beyond an empty dancing space, a deserted bandstand supported a silver-painted piano and a few music-racks like leafless metal trees. A big neurotic jukebox voice was crying out loud in an echo-chamber for love that it didn’t deserve, except from tone-deaf women.
Four youths in Hawaiian-print shirts were sucking on beer bottles in one of the rear booths. Each of the four had white peroxided forelocks, as if the same lightning had blasted them all at once. They looked at me with disdain. I had ordinary hair. I wasn’t atomic.
The man behind the bar wasn’t atomic, either. His face resembled a tired bullfrog’s. His jacket had once been white. His nostrils sighed at me when I ordered beer.
“How’s business?” I said politely.
He decapitated my bottle, savagely, and set it on thescarred formica between us. “If business improved five hundred per cent it wouldn’t even be lousy. Beer is the only order I get any more. You on the road?”
I said I was.
“There’s the life. I’d get out of here myself if I could. Wife and family, they hold a man down.” He let his shoulders slump and his jaw sag by way of illustration. “The last year, since the big shock, this place is as dead as King Tut.”
“The big shock?”
“The earthquake we had last summer. We took a beating from it, more ways than one. It scared the whole town crapless. I guess it did some people a lot of good. This was one wild town, brother. It ain’t so wild any more,
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