The Barbarous Coast (11 page)

In spite of all this backing, and the word on the outer door, Frost looked insecure. The authority that thick brown
eyebrows lent his face was false. Under them, his eyes were glum and yellowish. He had lost weight, and the skin below his eyes and jaw was loose and quilted like a half-sloughed snakeskin. His youthful crewcut only emphasized the fact that he was sick and prematurely aging.

“All right, Lashman,” he said to the guard. “You can wait outside. Lew Archer and me, we’re buddy-buddy from way back.”

His tone was ironic, but he also meant that I had eaten lunch at Musso’s with him once and made the mistake of letting him pick up the tab because he had been on an expense account and I hadn’t. He didn’t invite me to sit down. I sat down anyway, on the arm of one of the leather chairs.

“I don’t like this, Frost.”

“You
don’t like it. How do you think I feel? Here I thought we were buddy-buddy like I said, I thought there was a basis of mutual live-and-let-live there. My God, Lew, people got to be able to have faith and confidence in each other, or the whole fabric comes to pieces.”

“You mean the dirty linen you’re washing in public?”

“Now what kind of talk is that? I want you to take me seriously, Lew, it offends my sense of fitness when you don’t. Not that I matter personally. I’m just another joe working my way through life—a little cog in a big machine.” He lowered his eyes in humility. “A
very
big machine. Do you know what our investment is, in plant and contracts and unreleased film and all?”

He paused rhetorically. Through the window to my right, I could see hangarlike sound stages and a series of open sets: Brownstone Front, Midwestern Town, South Sea Village, and the Western Street where dozens of celluloid heroes had taken the death walk. The studio seemed to be shut down, and the sets were deserted, dream scenes abandoned by the minds that had dreamed them.

“Close to fifteen million,” Frost said in the tone of a priest
revealing a mystery. “A huge investment. And you know what its safety depends on?”

“Sun spots?”

“It isn’t sun spots,” he said gently. “The subject isn’t funny, fifteen million dollars isn’t funny. I’ll tell you what it depends on. You know it, but I’ll tell you anyway.” His fingers formed a Gothic arch a few inches in front of his nose. “Number one is glamour, and number two is goodwill. The two things are interdependent and interrelated. Some people think the public will swallow anything since the war—any stinking crud—but I know different. I’m a student of the problem. They swallow just so much, and then we lose them. Especially these days, when the industry’s under attack from all sides. We got to keep our glamour dry for the public. We got to hold on to our strategic goodwill. It’s psychological warfare, Lew, and I’m on the firing line.”

“So you send your troopers out to push citizens around. You want a testimonial from me?”

“You’re not just any old ordinary citizen, Lew. You get around so fast and you make so many mistakes. You go bucketing up to Lance Leonard’s house and invade his privacy and throw your weight around. I was on the phone to Lance just now. It wasn’t smart what you did, and it wasn’t ethical, and nobody’s going to forget it.”

“It wasn’t smart,” I admitted.

“But it was brilliant compared with the rest of it. Merciful God, Lew, I thought you had some feeling for situations. When we get to the payoff—you trying to force your way into the house of a lady who shall be nameless—” He spread his arms wide and dropped them, unable to span the extent of my infamy.

“What goes on in that house?” I said.

He munched the inside corner of his mouth, watching my face. “If you were smart, as smart as I used to think, you
wouldn’t ask that question. You’d let it lie. But you’re so interested in facts, I’ll tell you the one big fact. The less you know, the better for you. The more you know, the worse for you. You got a reputation for discretion. Use it.”

“I thought I was.”

“Uh-uh, you’re not that stupid, kiddo. Nobody is. Your neck’s out a mile, and you know it. You follow the thought, or do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable?”

“Spell it out.”

He got up from behind the desk. His sick yellow glance avoided mine as he moved around me. He leaned on the back of my chair. His allusive little whisper was scented with some spicy odor from his hair or mouth:

“A nice fellow like you that percolates around where he isn’t wanted—he could stop percolating period.”

I stood up facing him. “I was waiting for that one, Frost. I wondered when we were getting down to threats.”

“Call me Leroy. Hell, I wouldn’t threaten you.” He repudiated the thought with movements of his shoulders and hands. “I’m not a man of violence, you know that. Mr. Graff doesn’t like violence, and I don’t like it. That is, when I can prevent it. The trouble with a high-powered operation like this one, sometimes it runs over people by accident when they keep getting in the way. It’s our business to make friends, see, and we got friends all over, Vegas, Chicago, all over. Some of them are kind of rough, and they might get an idea in their little pointed heads—you know how it is.”

“No. I’m very slow on the uptake. Tell me more.”

He smiled with his mouth; his eyes were dull yellow flint. “The point is, I like you, Lew. I get a kick out of knowing that you’re in town, in good health and all. I wouldn’t want your name to be bandied about on the long-distance telephone.”

“It’s happened before. I’m still walking around, and feeling pretty good.”

“Let’s keep it that way. I owe it to you to be frank, as one old friend to another. There’s a certain gun that would blast you in a minute if he knew what you been up to. For his own reasons he’d do it, in his own good time. And it could be he knows now. That’s a friendly warning.”

“I’ve heard friendlier. Does he have a name?”

“You’d know it, but we won’t go into that.” Frost leaned forward across the back of the chair, his fingers digging deep into the leather. “Get wise to yourself, Lew. You trying to get yourself killed and drag us down with you, or what?”

“What’s all the melodrama about? I was looking for a woman. I found her.”

“You found her? You mean you saw her—you talked to her?”

“I didn’t get to talk to her. Your goon stopped me at the door.”

“So you didn’t actually see her?”

“No,” I lied.

“You know who she is?”

“I know her name. Hester Campbell.”

“Who hired you to find her? Who’s behind this?”

“I have a client.”

“Come on now, don’t go fifth-amendment on me. Who hired you, Lew?”

I didn’t answer.

“Isobel Graff? Did she sick you onto the girl?”

“You’re way off in left field.”

“I used to play left field. Let me tell you something, just in case it’s her. She’s nothing but trouble—schizzy from way back. I could tell you things about Isobel you wouldn’t believe.”

“Try me.”

“Is she the one?”

“I don’t know the lady.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“Eagle Scout’s honor.”

“Then where’s the trouble coming from? I got to know, Lew. It’s my job to know. I got to protect the Man and the organization.”

“What do you have to protect them against?” I said experimentally. “A murder rap?”

The experiment got results. Fear crossed Leroy Frost’s face like a shadow chased by shadows. He said very mildly and reasonably: “Nobody said a word about murder, Lew. Why bring up imaginary trouble? We got enough real ones. The trouble I’m featuring just this minute is a Hollywood peeper name of Archer who is half smart and half stupid and who has been getting too big for his goddam breeches.” While he spoke, his fear was changing to malice. “You going to answer my question, Lew? I asked you who’s your principal and why.”

“Sorry.”

“You’ll be sorrier.”

He came around the chair and looked me up and down and across like a tailor measuring me for a suit of clothes. Then he turned his back on me, and flipped the switch on his intercom.

“Lashman! Come in here.”

I looked at the door. Nothing happened. Frost spoke into the intercom again, on a rising note:

“Lashman! Marfeld!”

No answer. Frost looked at me, his yellow eyes dilating.

“I wouldn’t slug a sick old man,” I said.

He said something in a guttural voice which I didn’t catch. Outside the window, like his echo vastly amplified, men began to shout. I caught some words:

“He’s comin’ your way.” And further off: “I see him.”

A pink-haired man in a dark suit ran under the window, chasing his frenzied shadow across the naked ground. It
was George Wall. He was running poorly, floundering from side to side and almost falling. Close behind him, like a second bulkier shadow struggling to make contact with his heels, Marfeld ran. He had a gun in his hand.

Frost said: “What goes on?”

He cranked open the casement window and shouted the same question. Neither man heard him. They ran on in the dust, up Western Street, through the fake tranquillity of Midwestern Town. George’s legs were pumping weakly, and Marfeld was closing up the distance between them. Ahead of George, in South Sea Village, Lashman jumped into sight around the corner of a palm-thatched hut.

George saw him and tried to swerve. His legs gave under him. He got up, swaying in indecision as Lashman and Marfeld converged on him. Marfeld’s shoulder took him in the side, and he went down again. Lashman dragged him up to his feet, and Marfeld’s dark bulk blotted out his face.

Frost was leaning on the window sill, watching the distant figures. Marfeld’s shoulder, leaning over George, moved in a jerky rhythm from side to side. I pushed Frost out of the way—he was light as straw—and went out through the window and across the lot.

Marfeld and Lashman were fascinated and oblivious. Marfeld was pistol-whipping George while Lashman held him up. Blood streaked his blind face and spotted his charcoal-gray suit. I noticed the irrelevant fact that the suit belonged to me: I’d last seen it hanging in my bedroom closet. I moved on them in ice-cold anger, got one hand on Marfeld’s collar and the other on the slippery barrel of the gun. I heaved. The man and the gun came apart. The man went down backward. The gun stayed in my hand. It belonged to me, anyway. I reversed it and held it on Lashman:

“Turn him loose. Let him down easy.”

The little, cruel mouth in his big jaw opened and closed. The fever left his eyes. He laid George out on the white imported sand. The boy was out, with the whites of his eyes glaring.

I took the revolver off Lashman’s hip, stepped back and included Marfeld in the double line of fire. “What are you cookies up to, or you just do this for fun?”

Marfeld got to his feet, but he remained silent. Lashman answered the guns in my hands politely:

“The guy’s a crackpot. He bust into Mr. Graff’s office, threatened to kill him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It was something about his wife.”

“Button it down,” Marfeld growled. “You talk too much, Lashman.”

There were muffled footsteps in the dust behind me. I circled Marfeld and Lashman, and backed against the bamboo wall of a hut. Frost and the guard from the vestibule were crossing the lot toward us. This guard had a carbine on his arm. He stopped, and raised it into firing position.

“Drop it,” I said. “Tell him to drop it, Frost.”

“Drop it,” he said to the guard.

The carbine thudded on the ground and sent up a little dust cloud. The situation was mine. I didn’t want it.

“What goes on?” Frost said in a querulous tone. “Who is he?”

“Hester Campbell’s husband. Kick him around some more if you really want bad publicity.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“You better get him a doctor.”

Nobody moved. Frost slid his hand up under his waistcoat and fingered his rib-cage to see if his heart had stopped. He said faintly:

“You brought him here?”

“You know better than that.”

“The guy tried to kill Mr. Graff,” Lashman said virtuously. “He was chasing Mr. Graff around the office.”

“Is Graff all right?”

“Yeah, sure. I heard the guy yelling and run him out of there before he did any damage.”

Frost turned to the guard who had dropped the carbine: “How did he get in?”

The man looked confused, then sullen. He broke his lips apart with difficulty:

“He had a press card. Said he had an appointment with Mr. Graff.”

“You didn’t clear it with me.”

“You were busy, you said not to disturb—”

“Don’t tell me what I said. Get out of here. You’re finished here. Who hired you?”

“You did, Mr. Frost.”

“I ought to be shot for that. Now get out of my sight.” His voice was very mild. “Tell anybody about this, anybody at all, and you might as well leave town, it’ll save you hospital bills.”

The man’s face had turned a grainy white, the color of rice pudding. He opened and closed his mouth several times without speaking, turned on his heel, and trudged toward the gate.

Frost looked down at the bloody man in the sand. He whined with pity, all of it for himself:

“What am I going to do with him?”

“Move your butt and get him an ambulance.”

Frost turned his measuring look on me. Over it, he tried on a Santa Claus smile that didn’t fit. A fluttering tic in one eyelid gave him the air of having a secret understanding with me:

“I talked a little rough back there in the office. Forget it, Lew. I like you. As a matter of fact, I like you very much.”

“Get him an ambulance,” I said, “or you’ll be needing one for yourself.”

“Sure, in a minute.” He rolled his eyes toward the sky like a producer having an inspiration. “I been thinking for some time, long before this came up, we can use you in the organization, Lew. How would you like to go to Italy, all expenses paid? No real work, you’ll have men under you. It’ll be a free vacation.”

I looked at his sick, intelligent face and the cruel, stupid faces of the two men beside him. They went with the unreal buildings which stood around like the cruel, sick pretense of a city.

“I wouldn’t let you pay my way to Pismo Beach. Now turn around and walk, Frost. You too, Marfeld, Lashman. Stay close together. We’re going to a telephone and call the Receiving Hospital. We’ve wasted enough time.”