The drowning pool

I was trying to make sense of it when heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. The door opened and Knudson came into the room. I stood and watched him like a vivisectionist studying an animal under the knife. But his reaction was a man’s. When he saw the darkened face on the floor, his entire body buckled. He almost went down, but caught himself and leaned upright against the door-frame. A uniformed policeman looked over his shoulder into the room. Knudson shut the door on the questioning face.

He turned to me. His bloodless skin was a dirty yellow and his eyes glared. “Maude is dead?” The big voice came out small and furred with pain.

“She’s dead. Strychnine takes them fast.”

“How do you know it’s strychnine?”

“It shows on her. And there’s a note in the typewriter. I think it was meant for you.”

He looked at the woman on the floor between us, and flinched. “Give me the note.” His shoulder stayed against the door-frame. He would not walk over or past her.

I pulled the sheet from the roller and brought it to him.

He read it over and over to himself, his heavy lips forming the syllables. Sweat came out on his face and gathered in its crevices like tears.

“Why did she want to kill herself?” The effort of speaking wrenched his mouth sideways and left it that way.

“You tell me. You knew her better than I did.”

“I loved her. I guess she didn’t love me. Not enough.”

Grief worked on him like truth serum. He had forgotten that I was there, or who I was. Perhaps he had forgotten who he was.

Slowly he remembered. His forces regrouped themselves around a stony core of ego. I could see hard masculine pride come into his face, straightening the mouth and jaw, masking the hurt eyes. He folded the suicide note with large and gentle fingers, thrust it away in a pocket.

“I just got here,” he said. “Nothing was said. You didn’t find this paper.” He patted the pocket.

“And you are George the Sixth, the King of England. Not ex-Lieutenant Knudson of the Chicago police.”

His right hand reached for me, took hold of the front of my coat and tried to shake me. “You’ll do as I say.”

I struck the hand down. The letter I had been holding tore from my fingers and slid to the floor. He stooped and had it in a single movement. “What’s this?”

“The letter I was hired to investigate. It was written on the same typewriter as the suicide note. Think about that. When you’ve finished thinking about that, think about this. Your boy Franks got paid five hundred for the information that I was on my way here with Reavis. Walter Kilbourne paid him. I can identify the leader of the lynching party as one of Kilbourne’s men.”

“You talk too much.” He read the letter, grunting impatiently, then crushed it into a ball and put it away with the other.

“You’re destroying evidence, Knudson.”

“I said you talk too much. I’m the judge of what’s evidence around here.”

“You won’t be for long. You can take that as a threat if you want to.”

He leaned toward me with his teeth bared. “Who’s threatening who? I’ve had enough from you. Now you can get out of town.”

“I’m staying.”

He leaned closer. His breath was fetid and hot like a carnivore’s. “You’re getting out of town tonight, now, and you’re not coming back. I can send you up for a long time, Archer. You brought Reavis across a state line under duress. You know what that is in the law.”

He had me. I’d tied myself up and handed myself to him. Bitter water squeezed from my eyes and burned on my face.

His right hand moved under his coat, loosening the gun in his shoulder holster. “Are you going, or are you staying to take the rap?”

I didn’t answer.

He opened the door and I went out past the policeman in the hall. Times and places went through my head in a red rush. There had to be another time and place for me and Knudson.

Chapter 20

Mrs. Strang met me at the foot of the stairs. “Mr. Archer, somebody wants to speak to you on the telephone. A woman. She’s been on the line some time but I didn’t like to interrupt when you were talking to the Chief of Police.”

“No,” I said. “That would be lèse majesté.”

She looked at me strangely. “At least I hope she’s still on the line. She said she’d wait. Are you all right, Mr. Archer?”

“I feel fine.” There was a roaring hollowness in my head, a tight sour ball at the bottom of my stomach. My case had been taken away from me just as it started to break. I felt fine.

I said, “This is Archer,” into the telephone.

“Well, you needn’t bite my head off. Were you sleeping?” The voice was sweet and lingering, like a fragrance: Mavis Kilbourne in a melting mood.

“Yeah, I was having nightmares. About a fancy broad who turned out to be a pickpocket whose surname was Trouble.”

She laughed: a mountain stream just below the snowline. “I’m not really a pickpocket, or even a broad. After all, I took what was mine. You’re not in a very pleasant mood, are you?”

“Improve it for me if you can. Tell me how you knew I was here.”

“I didn’t. I called your house and office in Los Angeles. Your answering service gave me the number. I don’t even know where you are, except that it’s Nopal Valley. I’m in Quinto.”

The operator cut in and asked for another ten cents please. The bell on the pay telephone sounded clearly over the line.

“I’m ru

“Why the sudden interest at three in the morning? There’s nothing in my pocket but a gun.”

“It’s three-thirty.” Her yawn rustled in the mouthpiece. “I’m dead.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Anyway, I’m glad you have a gun. You may need it.”

“For what?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. I need you to do something for me. Will you accept me as a client?” The siren note again, like distant violins at a fine feast.

“I already have a client,” I lied.

“Couldn’t you work for both of us? I’m not proud.”

“I am.”

She lowered her voice. “I know it was a dirty trick to play on you. I had to do it, though. I burned the film, and it didn’t explode like you said.”

“Forget that. The trouble is that this could be another dirty trick.”

“It isn’t. I really need you. I may not sound afraid, but I actually am.”

“Of what?”

“I said I can’t tell you. Come to Quinto and I will. Please come.” We were talking in circles.

“Where are you in Quinto?”

“In a lunchroom by the beach, but I better not meet you here. You know the big pier by the yacht basin?”

“Yeah,” I said. “A perfect setup for an ambush.”

“Don’t be like that. I’ll be out at the end of the pier. There’s nobody there at this time of night. Will you come?”

“Give me half an hour.”

Quinto was any small seaport at four o’clock in the morning. Dark and empty streets slanted down to the dark and empty ocean. The air was fairly clear but droplets of water formed on my windshield and a sea smell, bitter and fresh, invaded the unpeopled town. At night it was an outpost of the sea, filled by cold tidal winds and shifting submarine blackness.

The reflection of a stop-light made a long red smudge on the asphalt where 101 Alternate crossed the foot of the town. Four or five heavy trucks had gathered at the truckstop on the corner like buffalo at a waterhole. As I turned right onto the freeway, I could see the drivers bent over early breakfast, and a thin-browed, pug-faced waitress smoking a cigarette by the kitchen door. It would have been very pleasant to stop and eat three eggs and talk a while and then go back to bed in the motel. I cut my wheels sharp left at the next crossing, and the tires whined in self-pity: so late, so weary. I said aloud, to myself and the whining tires: “Get it over with.”