“How was George’s?”
“Fine. I left Mrs. Tarantine there.”
“Did her brother-in-law find you all right?”
“Mario? I didn’t see him.”
“He left here a few minutes ago. He wanted to invite her for overnight – you wouldn’t think a dame with her class would want to stay with them guineas, though. Hell, I wanted to hold him in a cell but the Chief says no. We need the Italian vote in the election. Matter of fact, the Chief is one himself, shut my big mouth.”
“If the vote depends on Mario, you’ll probably lose it. I’ve just been talking to McCutcheon.”
“What did he say?”
“A lot of things. Which boil down to three possibilities: drowning, suffocation, freezing.”
“Freezing?”
“That’s what he said. He also said that it was impossible, but I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me if Mario’s boat had a freezer.”
“I doubt it. The big commercial boats have. You don’t see them on a sport boat that size. There’s an ice plant down near the dock, though. Maybe we better take a look at it.”
“Later. Right now I want to see Mario.”
I was frustrated. When we reached George’s Cafe, the booth I had occupied was empty.
The old Greek waiter hustled across the room. “I’m sorry, sir, I poured out your beer after the lady left. I thought–”
“When did she leave?”
“Five minutes, ten minutes, hard to tell. When her friend came in–”
“The man with the bandaged head?”
“That’s him. He sat down with her for a minute, then they got up and left.” He twisted his head towards Callahan. “Is something the matter, sheriff?”
“Huh. Did he threaten her? Show any kind of a weapon?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” The old man’s face had turned a dull white, like bread dough. “I see any trouble, I call you on the telephone, you know that. They just walked out like anybody else.”
“No argument?”
“Maybe they argued a little. How can I tell? I was busy.”
I drew Callahan to one side.
“Did she have her car?”
He nodded. “They’re probably in it, eh?”
“It looks to me like a general alarm, with road-blocks. The quicker the better.”
But the alarm and the road-blocks were too late. I waited in the sheriffs office for an hour, and nobody was brought in. By ten o’clock I was ready to try a long shot in the dark.
Chapter 34
For two hours I drove down the white rushing tunnel carved by my headlights in the solid night. At the end of the run the unbuilt town lay dark around me, its corners desolate under the sparse streetlights. When I stepped out of my car the night shot up like a tree and branched wide into blossoming masses of stars. Under their far cold lights I felt weak and little. If a fruit fly lived for one day instead of two, it hardly seemed to matter. Except to another fruit fly.
There was light behind the Venetian blinds of the house that Dalling built, the kind of warm and homey light a lonely man might envy as he passed the house. The same light that murderers worked in when they killed their wives or husbands or lovers or best friends. The house was as quiet as a burial vault.
The light was in the living-room. I mounted the low veranda and looked in between the slats of the blind. Galley lay prone on the tan rug, one arm supporting her head, the other outstretched. The visible side of her face was smeared darkly with something that looked like blood. Her visible eye was closed. There was a heavy automatic gun in her outstretched hand. The too-late feeling that had driven me across the desert went to my knees and loosened them.
The front door was standing open and I went in, letting the screen door close itself behind me. From the hall I heard her breathing and sighing in slow alternation. She sounded like a runner who has run a fast race and fallen and broken his heart.
I was halfway across the room toward the prostrate girl when she became aware of me. She rose on her knees and elbows, her breasts sharp-pointed at the floor, the blunt gun in her right hand pointed at me. Behind the tangled black hair that hung down over her face, her eyes gleamed like an animal’s. I froze.
She straightened gradually, rocking back on her heels and rising to her feet; stood swaying a little with her legs apart, both hands holding the gun up. She tossed her hair back. Her eyes were wide and fixed.
“What happened to you?”
She answered me in a small tired voice: “I don’t know. I must have passed out for a while.”
“Give me the gun.” I took a step toward her. Another step would put me within kicking distance, but my feet stuck to the floor.
“Stand back. Back to where you were.” Her voice had changed. It cracked like an animal trainer’s whip. And her hands were steady as stone.
The soles of my feet came unstuck and slid away from her. Her eyes were blank and ominous, like the gun’s round eye.
“Where’s Mario?”
She shrugged impatiently. “How should I know?”
“You left the cafe together.”
Her mouth twisted. “God, I despise you, Archer! You’re a dirty little sees-all hears-all tells-all monkey, aren’t you? What difference does it make to you what people do?”
“I like to pretend I’m God. But I don’t really fool myself. It takes a murderer to believe it about himself. Personally, I’m just another fruit fly. If I don’t care what happens to fruit flies, what is there to care about? And if I don’t care, who will? It makes no difference to the stars.” My talk was postponing the gun’s roaring period, but I couldn’t talk it out of her hands and out the window.
“You’re talking nonsense, chattering like a monkey.” Her foot felt for the armchair behind her, and she sat down carefully, cradling the gun on her knee. “If you must talk, we’ll talk seriously. You sit down, too.”
I squatted uncomfortably on a leatherette hassock by the fireplace. Yellow light fell like an ugly truth from the bulbs in the ceiling fixture. Galley was bleeding from a wide cut on one cheekbone.
I said: “There’s blood on your face.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Blood on your hands, too.”
“Not yours. Not yet.” She smiled her bitter smile. “I want to explain to you why I killed Keith Dalling. Then we’ll decide what to do.”
“You have the gun.”
“I know. I’m going to keep it. I didn’t have the gun when I shot Keith. I had to fight him for it.”
“I see. Self-defense. Neat. Only, can you get away with it?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said.
“It’s the first time if you are.”
“Yes, the first time.” She spoke rapidly and low. “When I drove Joe to the Point Tuesday morning, I saw Keith’s car at the docks. He knew Joe would turn up there: I told him myself. I didn’t realize what Keith was planning. I went back to Los Angeles, to Keith’s apartment, and waited for him there. When he came home I asked him what he had done, and he confessed to me. He’d fought with Joe on the boat and pushed him into the ocean. He thought the way was clear now for us to marry. I couldn’t conceal what I thought of him, I didn’t try. He was a murderer, and I told him so. Then he pulled a gun on me, the gun he’d taken from Joe, your gun, as you guessed he did. I pretended to be convinced – I had to save my life – and I made up to him and got the gun away from him. I shot him. I had to. Then I panicked and ran out and threw your gun in the drain, and when the police questioned me I lied about everything. I was afraid. I knew that Joe was dead, and it made no difference to him if I blamed Keith’s death on him. I know now I made a mistake. I should have called the police when it happened, and told them the truth.”