Find a Victim by Ross MacDonald Page A

Suspicion flicked a bright double tongue from the black holes in the centers of her eyes. “Tony isn’t dead. You’re trying to con me.”
    “Would you like to pay a visit to the morgue?”
    “Don didn’t say anything. He would of told me if Tony got it. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
    “Why would he tell you what you already knew? You fingered Tony, didn’t you?”
    “I did not. I didn’t even set eyes on him since last Sunday night. I’ve been home here all day today.” She rose and stood over me, her face drawn and jaundiced. “Is somebody trying to frame me? Who are you, anyway?”
    “A friend of Don’s. I talked to him tonight.”
    “Don wouldn’t do that to me. Is he arrested?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Are you sluff?”
    “Oh sure,” I said. “That’s why I brought you those reefers.”
    “Where did Don get them?” Her black gaze slanted down at me from under her broad low brow.
    “From Bozey. Don couldn’t bring them himself, so he sent me.”
    “Funny he never mentioned you.”
    “He doesn’t tell you everything.”
    “No. I guess he doesn’t.”
    She crossed the room to the venetian-blinded window and ran her fingers idly down the slats. She returned with dragging feet and made herself small in the corner of the divan, hugging her knees to her breast.
    “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “You tell me Tony’s dead and Don’s been stringing me. Why should I listen to you?”
    “I’m telling the truth.”
    “Are you supposed to be in on the deal?”
    “I thought I was. But it looks as if he’s been stringing both of us. The way he laid the blueprint out for me, you were the one that was going to finger Tony.”
    “That was the original plan,” she said. “I was supposed to flag him down. No shooting, understand—I wouldn’t go for that. Just stop the truck on the road and let the others take over.”
    “Don and Bozey?”
    “Yeah. Only they changed the plan. Don didn’t want me sticking my neck out, see.” She stroked her round smooth neck, unconsciously. “And then something came up—something that Tony told me Sunday night. He was drunk when he told me, I didn’t believe it at the time. He was alwaysfull of blowtop tales about her. But Don believed it when I told him.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “This tale about Anne Meyer.”
    “Try it on me.”
    She pinched the skin of her throat between thumb and forefinger and looked at me sideways. “You ask an awful lot of questions. How do I know you’re not a cop? How do I know those reefers weren’t a come-on?”
    I stood up, feigning anger, and moved to the door. “Have it your way, sister. I can take so much, but when you call me sluff—”
    She followed me. “Wait a sec. You don’t have to flip your lid. Okay, you’re a friend of Don’s, you’re in on the deal. What are you doing now?”
    “I’m getting out. I don’t like the smell of it.”
    “Do you have a car?”
    “It’s outside.”
    “Will you drive me some place?”
    “If you say so. Where?”
    “I don’t know where. But I’m not going to sit here and wait to be picked off.” She went to an inner door and turned with her hand on the knob. “I’ll shower and put some clothes on. It won’t take a minute.” Her smile went on and off like an electric sign.
    I waited for fifteen minutes, lulled by the splattering rush of the shower behind the wall. I smoked an old-fashioned cigarette made of tobacco and leafed through the “romance” magazines on the divan. I Was a Love Decoy. My Lost Weekend. Do Men Have Forbidden Desires? I Was an Old Man’s Plaything. The cover girls all looked like Jo, in one way or another. She was legion.
    It hit me finally that her shower-bath had lasted much too long. I walked into her bedroom without knocking. The bureau drawers were hanging open, empty except for afew soiled clothes. I opened the bathroom door. The shower was running full force into the bathtub, but there was no girl under