“You were bitten by a mosquito.”
I turned from the road to look at her, and our eyes met for a moment. Hers were uncomprehending.
“That isn’t funny,” she said icily.
I was angry and amused at the same time. “Hell, I didn’t bite you.” But not angry enough to remind her unnecessarily of the night she had forgotten. Even to me, Mosquito seemed unreal, the figment of a red-lit dream.
I glanced at the girl’s face, and saw that she was remembering: the shadow of the memory shaded her eyes. “It’s true,” she said, “what you said about the habit. It’s terrible. I started out trying it for kicks, with Ronnie. The first few times he gave it to me free. Now it’s the only thing that makes me feel good. In between, I feel awful. How do you think I feel now?”
“Half dead, the way you look.”
“Completely dead, and I don’t even care. I don’t even care.”
After a while she dropped off to sleep again. She slept through the heavy truck-traffic on 101 Alternate and the even heavier traffic on the boulevard. It took Main Street to wake her finally.
I found a parking place near the Hall of Justice. It was nearly two o’clock, a good time to catch Peter Colton in his office. She came along quietly enough, still walking as if the sidewalk were foam rubber, until she saw the building. Then she jerked to a stop: “You’re going to turn me in!”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, but I was lying. A couple of sidewalk loungers were drifting toward us, prepared to witness anything we cared to do. “Come along with me now, or I’ll bite your other shoulder.”
She glared at me, but she came, on stiff unwilling legs. Our short black shadows stumped up the steps together.
Colton was in his office, a big jut-nosed man in his fifties, full of quiet energy. When I opened the door, his head was bowed over papers on his desk, and he stayed in that position for a measurable time. His light brown hair, cut en brosse, gave him a bearish look that went with his disposition. I pushed the girl ahead of me into the room, and shut the door rather sharply. She moved sideways along the wall, away from me.
Colton looked up with calculated effect, his powerful nose pointed accusingly at me. “Well. The prodigal son. You look terrible.”
“That comes of living on the husks that the swine did eat.”
“A Biblical scholar yet, and I wasn’t even certain you could read.” Before I could answer, he aimed his face at the girl, who was trembling against the walclass="underline" “Who’s this, the prodigal daughter?”
“This is Ruth,” I said. “What’s your last name, Ruth?”
She stammered: “I won’t tell you.”
Colton regarded her with cold blue interest. “What’s the girl been taking?”
“Heroin.”
“It’s a lie,” she said woodenly.
Colton shrugged his shoulders. “You’re in the wrong department, aren’t you? I’m busy. Why bring her to me?”
“Busy on the Dalling case?”
“You’ve got nerve, Lew, even to bring up the name. Lucky for you the Tarantine woman backed up your story about the gun. The Assistant D. A. wanted to clap you in one of the nice new cells till I talked him out of it. Stick around and waste my time and I’ll talk him right back into it. And it won’t be hard to do. We’ve had a lot of trouble with private operators the last couple of years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like when I took Dwight Troy for you.”
“Don’t brag. I know you’re hot. Now why don’t you take all that Fahrenheit and peddle it someplace else? You can’t polish apples with us by bringing in a little old junkie. They’re two for a nickel. I could round up fifty any time between here and Union Station.” Colton was angry. He had kept me out of a cell, but he hadn’t forgiven me for what I had done to the law.
The girl looked at me sideways, smiling slightly. It gave her pleasure to see me taking it. She sat down in a straight-backed chair against the wall and crossed her legs.
“Go ahead and ride me,” I said. “It’s the old Army play, when somebody’s riding you.”
“Nobody’s riding me. I’ll tell you frankly, though, this Hammond woman has been ugly to deal with. And all day yesterday she was after us to release the body to her. Why in God’s name did you have to go and stir up Jane Starr Hammond?”
“It seemed like a promising lead at the time. I’m not infallible.”
“Don’t act as if you thought you were, then. Next time the wolves can have you.” He rose and moved to the window, his back to the room.
“All right,” I said. “I apologize. Now if your wounded feelings have had enough of a therapeutic workout, let’s get back to business.”
He growled something unintelligible.
“You haven’t found Tarantine, have you?”
That brought him back from the window. “We have not.” He added with heavy irony: “No doubt he gave you his forwarding address.”
“I think I know where to look for him. In the sea.”
“You’re a little late. The Sheriffs Aero Squadron in Pacific Point has been working on that for two days. The Coast Guard’s carrying on dragging operations.”
“Any trace of his companion?”
“None. They’re not even sure he had a companion. The only witness they have won’t swear there were two in the skiff. It was just an impression he had.”
“Ruth is a witness. She saw him swim ashore.”
“I heard something about that.” He turned on the girclass="underline" “Where have you been?”
“Around.” She drew herself together, shrinking in his shadow.
“What about this man you saw?”
She told her story, haltingly.
He considered it. “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? You junkies have funny dreams, I hear.”
“I’m no junkie.” Her voice was strained thin by fright. “I saw the man come out of the water, just like I said.”
“Was it Tarantine? Do you know Tarantine?”
“It wasn’t Joe. The man on the beach was bigger than Joe. He had a smooth shape.” She giggled unexpectedly.
Colton looked at me: “She know Tarantine?”
“He sold her heroin.”
The giggle ceased. “It’s a lie.”
“Show her a picture of Dalling,” I said. “It’s what I brought her here for.”
He leaned across his desk and took some blown-up photographs out of a drawer. I looked at them over his shoulder as he shuffled them. Dalling lying full-length in his blood, his face like plaster in the magnesium light. Dalling close up and full face. Dalling right profile, with the black leaking hole in the side of his neck. Dalling left profile, looking as handsome as ever, and very dead.
One at a time, he handed them to the girl. She gasped when she saw the first one. “I think it’s him.” And when she had looked at them alclass="underline" “It’s him all right. He was a neat-looking fellow. What happened to him?”
Colton scowled down at her. He hated questions that he couldn’t answer. After a pause he said more or less to himself: “We’ve practically assumed that Tarantine killed Dalling. If it was the other way around, wouldn’t that be a boff?” He gave no sign of laughing, though.
“If Dalling killed Tarantine, who killed Dalling?” I said.
He looked at me quizzically. “Maybe you shot him yourself, after all.”
Though Colton didn’t mean it seriously, the warmed-over accusation irritated me. “If you can take time off from making funny remarks, I want you to do something for me.” I emphasized the ‘me.’
“Well?”
“Call up the head of the Narcotics Bureau and ask him nicely to come over here.”
The girl looked up at me sharply, her mouth working. I was threatening her food and drink and sleep, threatening to sink her island in the sea.
“For her?” Colton snorted. “Maybe you need a rest, Lew. I’ll get a matron for her.”