The drowning pool

“In Italy?”

“Where else? You are a friend of Pat Reavis?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Be careful then,” dryly and quietly. “He is a very pleasant boy most of the time, but he can be very unpleasant.” He tapped the side of his lean skull. “There is something wrong with Pat: he has no limit. He will do anything, if he is drunk or angry. And he is a liar.”

“Have you had trouble with him?”

“Not me, no. I don’t have trouble with anybody.” I could see why in his face. He had the authority of a man who had seen everything and not been changed by it.

“I don’t have much trouble myself,” I said, “but thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

Reavis came back and draped a ponderous arm over my shoulder. “How you doing, Lew boy? Feeling younger now?”

“Not young enough to carry extra weight.” I moved, and his arm dropped away.

“What’s the matter, Lew?” He looked at the bartender, who was watching us. “Tony been ru

“I like Italians very much,” I said.

The bartender said slowly and clearly. “I was telling the gentleman that you are a liar, Pat.”

Reavis sat and took it. The lips drew back from his fine white teeth, but he didn’t say a word. I put a cigarette in my mouth. The lighter flicked under my nose before I could reach for a match.

Normally I objected to being waited on. But when a man was perfect in his role it was a pleasure to see him walk through it.

“Two more of the same,” I said to his slim impassive back as he walked away.

Reavis looked at me like a grateful dog. Which I was observing for rabies.

Chapter 7

Two more drinks, which I paid for, restored Reavis’s opinion of himself and the use of his tongue. He told me how he was promoted in the field on Guadalcanal, to become the youngest captain in the whole Pacific. How the OSS heard of his prowess and gave him a hush-hush assignment tracking down spies and saboteurs. How the Saturday Evening Post offered him several thousand dollars for an article about his personal experiences, but he was sworn to secrecy and besides he had other sources of income. He told me he could walk a city block on his hands, and frequently did. He was going through an interminable list of the female friends he had served and sent on their way rejoicing, when someone came up behind me and tapped my shoulder.

A dirty fedora, dirty-gray eyes, a long probing nose with a slightly bulbous tip, a lipless mouth like the wrinkle formed by a scar. His face was lopsided in the bar mirror and still looked lopsided when I turned. The corners of his mouth had tobacco-juice stains.

“Lewis Archer?”

“Right.”

“I found your car down the street and I figured you were in one of the places along here. I’m Franks, Detective-Sergeant.”

“Parking trouble? I didn’t see any signs.”

The scar tore open and showed some yellow teeth. It seemed that Detective-Sergeant Franks registered amusement in this way. “Death trouble, Mr. Archer. The Chief phoned down and said to pick you up.”

“Mrs. Slocum,” I said, and I realized I’d liked her pretty well. Too often the human ones were the ones that got in the way.

“Now how would you know it was the old lady—”

“It’s not the young Mrs. Slocum then—James Slocum’s wife?”

“Naw, the old lady,” he said, as if that could be taken for granted.

“What happened to her?”

“Don’t you know? I thought maybe you’d know. The Chief says you’re the last one that seen her alive.” He averted his face coyly and spat on the floor.

I got up suddenly. His hand went to his right hip and stayed there. “What happened to her?” I said.

“The old girl got drowned. They found her in the swimming-pool a little while ago. Maybe she jumped in for fun, or maybe somebody pushed her. You don’t go swimming at night with all your clothes on. Not if you can’t swim a stroke and got a weak heart in the bargain. The Chief says it looks like murder.”

I glanced at Reavis; and saw that his stool was unoccupied. The door marked Gents was oscillating slightly on its hinges. I moved for it and pushed it wide. At the far end of the passage the shadow of a big man moved in an open doorway and disappeared. Simultaneously a gun went off behind me and something jarred the door under my hand. A spent slug dropped to the floor at my feet among a shower of slivers. I picked it up and turned to face Franks, tossing the slug from hand to hand because it was hot. He advanced crabwise, with a service .45 steady in his hand.

“You coming peaceable, or do I shoot to maim this time?” The people in the room had formed a group behind him, a heaving body with twenty staring heads. Antonio, still and scornful, watched from behind the bar.

“Trigger-happy, Sergeant? Who gave a gun with real live shells in it?”

“Hands up, you, and watch your lip.”

I tossed him the piece of lead and put my hands on my head. My hair was thi

He circled me cautiously, and the crowd made way for us. When I opened the door a small shiny object whizzed past my head and rang on the sidewalk. It took me a minute to realize what it was: the fifty-cent piece I had left on the bar as a tip for Antonio. Then I began to get angry.

When Franks unsnapped the handcuffs from his belt, I was ready to fight him for them. He saw that, and didn’t insist. Instead, he put me in the front seat of the police car, beside the uniformed driver, and sat in the back where he could watch me.

“The siren, Ke

A fool in an official job, with guns and gadgets to play with, could cause a lot of disturbance. The siren purred, growled, whooped, screeched and ululated like a mountain lion as we went up the hill. I didn’t say a word. Detective-Sergeant Franks wouldn’t know an explanation if it bit him in the leg and called him brother.

His Chief was another story. He had set up a temporary office in the kitchen and was questioning the witnesses one by one, while a uniformed policeman took notes in shorthand. When the sergeant took me in to him, Knudson was talking to Francis Marvell. The authority I had noticed in his bearing had flared up in the emergency, like a slow fire doused with gasoline. The opaque eyes and the thick face were full of life and power. Homicide was his dish.

“Archer?” The heavy voice was crisp.

“This is him, Chief.” Sergeant Franks was staying close to me, still with his hand on his gun.

“I’d like to congratulate the sergeant,” I said. “He only one shot to bring me in. And I’m a witness in a murder, and you know how serious that is.”

“Murder?” Marvell spread his hands on the red plastic-topped table and pushed himself to his feet. His jaw moved down and up silently before more words came out. “I understood it was an accident.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Knudson snapped. “Sit down.” He used the same tone on Franks: “What’s this about shooting?”

“He tried to escape, so I fired a warning shot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I made a wild break for freedom.”

He whirled on me: “If you didn’t try to escape, why did you go for the door?”

“I needed a breath of fresh air, Sergeant. Now I need another one.”

“Break it up,” Knudson cut in. “Franks, you go out and help Winowsky with his photographic equipment. You, Archer, sit down and I’ll be with you shortly.”

I sat down in a straightbacked kitchen chair on the other side of the room and lit a cigarette. It tasted bitter. A large wooden tray of what had been hors d’oeuvres stood on the tiled sink beside me: the remains of anchovies, a little earthenware crock half full of caviar. I helped myself to some caviar on a cracker. Mrs. Slocum had lived well.