Chapter Ten

The middle of nowhere isn’t such a bad place to be. The trouble is, you can’t stay there very long. Sooner or later, something starts to throb. At first it’s just a far-off motion you’re aware of; then you begin to react to the throbbing, feel its effects, realize that it’s your head.

Then the pain comes in waves, like the tide washing its way up a beach. The beach is your body, and it lies there and lets the pain ebb and flow, ebb and flow, over your head, over your neck, over your shoulders and arms and chest.

Finally you decide to do something about it, something hard, like opening your eyes.

That’s what I did, eventually. I opened my eye and found myself lying at the bottom of the dune. I’d pitched off the top, apparently, and slid down. The bullet hadn’t hit me, the fall didn’t break any bones. It was the sapping that caused the pain, and that was enough. I ached all over.

I lay there, moving my hand over my limbs and torso. I stretched my legs, sat up, steadied myself against a long moment of dizziness, and then I listened.

No sound. Nothing to hear. And nothing to see, either, in the dark. I gazed up at the rim of the dune, towards the sky beyond. The first star was still twinkling.

Damn you, I thought, I’ll never wish on you again.

I wondered about my little playmates. Were they still looking for me in the dark? Well, I could join the game. Hide-and-seek didn’t exactly appeal to me at the moment, but I knew I’d better play along.

The dune was high. I started to stand up, then decided it would be more comfortable to crawl. I inched forward, upward, until I clung to the dune’s lip, peering over towards the derrick.

By this time my eye was adapted to the light, or the lack of it. I gazed at the ground, looking for Fritz. He was gone. And the small man wasn’t there, either.

More important, and more convincing to me, was the realization that my car was gone, too.

Of course, they might be waiting down the road. But I’d have to chance it.

I stood up, took a deep breath. My ribs protested, but my lungs enjoyed it, so I took another. And another. Gradually my head cleared. I found I could walk.

Making my way into the shadow of the derrick, I examined the sand. Plenty of footprints, and the imprint of Fritz’s body, plus my own. And the car tracks, two sets of them. They’d turned and gone out the same way; there was no other choice.

I followed the tracks, moving slowly and cautiously. I wound my way along until I could see the road. It was clear. Then I started walking. It seemed like forever before I hit the highway. It seemed like forever before I thumbed a ride. I guess nobody was interested in picking up a bleeding stranger with an eye-patch who stood on the highway in the middle of the night. Nobody except an ambulance driver.

But as luck would have it, I got the next best thing. The car that finally halted contained a Dr. Engebrusher, of Santa Monica. He took an immediate professional interest in me. I regaled him with the story of my mysterious assailants as we drove to his home.

Once there, he patched me up. I don’t know if he believed me at first, but he patched me up. And when I asked to use his phone, I guess he realized my story was straight. He listened while I dialed the L.A. police and reported that my car was missing. Then I told them about the assault. They were very courteous; told me to stay right where I was until they signaled a squad car to pick me up and bring me in.

I asked for Thompson, then. My luck was holding. He was on duty, late as it was.

“Hello, this is Mark Clayburn. I just gave your people a report. Want to hear it?”

His groan was audible over the phone. “Now what?” he said.

I told him what it was now. All of it. All of it except why. That I had to change to protect Bannock. I made the reason appear to be that they were trying to find out what I knew about the deaths. Which, in a way, was still true enough. Then I described my playmates, in rich and, I fear, somewhat profane detail.

“Recognize the little guy?” I asked. “Sound like Dean, by any chance?”

“A little. In fact, more than a little. But it wasn’t,” Thompson answered.

“Why do you say that?”

“According to your story, you were picked up around four or four-thirty, right?”

“Right.”

“And they drove you south and jumped you about an hour and a half, say two hours later?”

“That’s about it. I figure seven o’clock, thereabouts,” I said.

“Well, at seven o’clock, thereabouts, Dean was sitting here in this office, telling us he didn’t know anything about where Estrellita Juarez had run off to.”

“Must have been two other guys,” I told him.

“Must have been. But don’t worry, we’ll check the files. Probably have lots of pictures waiting for you by the time you get down here.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. We aim to please.”

I hung up. I was just forcing ten bucks on Dr. Engebrusher when the squad car arrived for me.

After that, we went into action.

I’ve got to hand it to the boys; maybe they were having a little trouble finding a murderer, but there was nothing wrong with their methods.

They didn’t take me right in. They took me back to the place where I got slugged. They made me reconstruct the action, took down a full description of everything. They contacted the State Highway Patrol about covering the scene in daylight to look for the bullets. The bulletin about the car and the description of Fritz and his little friend had already gone out.

There were three men in the car, and we had quite a chat as we finally drove downtown. They wanted to know all about the Foster case, of course. One of them, off the record, seemed to disagree with my theory that the killing was the work of a cold-blooded, calculating murderer.

“He must have been nuts,” he told me. “Anybody that breaks in on a dish like that Polly Foster just to shoot her has to be crazy.”

He turned to me. “You’re the one who found her, isn’t that so? What kind of a story is that, about going out there to get her autograph?”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “So help me.”

“What kind of a dame was she? I mean, on the level.”

“Sorry. I only met her once. And our relations were strictly vertical.”

He didn’t get it, but the cop who was driving laughed.

“I guess they’re all alike,” he said. “All them Hollywood people. Bunch of screwballs, in one mess after another.”

“You know better than that,” I answered. “There’s hundreds who never get into any trouble. Lots of nice, decent citizens in the movie colony, just as there’s lots of nice, decent citizens down on Olive, or Main. But the few exceptions, the wrongos, are the only ones you ever hear about. That’s what gives a bad reputation to the whole bunch.”

“Pretty funny talk, coming from a guy who’s just been beat up the way you have.”

“Maybe so, but it’s the truth. What about your Department? There’ve been cases where a couple of cops went off the deep end. But does that mean you’re all crooked?”

“He’s right, Evans,” said the man sitting next to me. “And I’m sorry I sounded off that way about Polly Foster. But you know how you get after a few years in this game.”

We reached our destination, but I didn’t see Thompson waiting for me. My business was with another department. They had everything ready for me to swear out a complaint, and they took down the story and the description again, and then a sergeant brought out the file and I started to look at faces.

As I said before, all very efficient and quite polite. It was nice to be on the other side of the fence for a change, after the grilling I’d taken when they heard about Polly Foster.

I was even beginning to relish the attention a little, enjoy the way they hovered over me as I checked the photos. Then they took the play away from me. Somebody buzzed the sergeant and he hit the phone.

After a minute, he turned to me. “They’ve found your car,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Highway Patrol located it backed off the road near the gun club, below Santa Monica. Right near Washington Boulevard. Everything’s okay, I guess. You can check and see if anything is missing. They’ll be bringing it in later.”

“Nothing on the two men?”

“Nothing so far. They’re on the lookout. Meanwhile, here’s some more pictures.”

I looked at pictures. As I looked, I began to wonder about my previous remarks concerning the integrity of the citizens of Los Angeles County. There seemed to be no end to the number of malefactors.

I stared at scars, briefly noted broken noses, carefully eyed cauliflower ears, scanned sneers; most of these men had their history written in their faces and there was no need to read a description of their misdemeanors. I know Lombroso’s theory is discredited, but there’s still something about physiognomy that registers with me. I’d seen too many faces like these in my time to discount them, seen them at the edges of dark alleys, seen them peering through the dirty, fly-specked windows of the dives, seen them staring up from the gutters of grim streets.

So far, though, I hadn’t found Fritz, or the man who looked something like Joe Dean but wasn’t. I reached for another stack when the door opened and Thompson came in.

“Hi,” I said. “Wondered whether you’d come down. Want to hear about it?”

He didn’t return my smile or my greeting. He just looked at me and shook his head.

“No time,” he said. “Leaving this minute. Just thought you might be interested in the news.”

“What news?”

“Call just came in. Tom Trent’s dead.”

I blinked.

“His sister found him in the garage five minutes ago. Shot through the heart.”

“Murder?”

“Don’t know. Could be a suicide.” He turned. “Going to find out.”

“Let me come with you.”

“You know the regulations.”

“But I—”

“Somebody’ll be around to see you tomorrow. We’ll keep in touch.”

I nodded at his back as he went out.

Then I started to look at pictures again, but I didn’t see them. All I saw was Tom Trent lying dead in his garage. It would be murder, I knew that. And he’d been shot through the heart.

The room started to spin a little, but the scene before my eye never wavered. It was so clear I could notice every detail. There was one detail I had to verify, though.

I stuck around for over an hour until the reports started coming in. Then I needled the sergeant until he told me.

“You were wrong,” he said. “Looks like suicide, so far. Had the gun in his hand and everything. Shot himself in the chest.”

Then I asked about the detail that interested me. The sergeant looked puzzled at my questions, but he told me what I wanted to know: what Trent had been wearing, and just where the bullet had entered his body.

“Thanks,” I said. “And you can tell Thompson or whoever is in charge that it wasn’t suicide.”

“No?”

I shook my head. “I’m positive. Even if Trent wanted to kill himself, there’s one thing he’d never do. He’d never shoot himself through the monogram.”