Find a Victim by Ross MacDonald Page B

it.
    I went through the dark kitchen, out the back door, down a flight of wooden steps into a walled alley. A little light filtered down through the porous sky. It showed me a fat old Negro wedged in a sitting position between two garbage cans against the wall. With his head hanging sideways and his legs spraddled, he looked like a huge black baby left on the world’s doorstep. I shook him and smelled the rotgut and let him sleep.
    I went toward the mouth of the alley, a high pale rectangle filled with diluted light from the corner streetlamp. A man’s figure entered its frame. Wide-shouldered and narrow-hipped in a leather windbreaker, he moved with a tomcat’s giace and silence. I caught a glimpse of his face. It was young and pale. Dark red hair hung down over his temples in lank wings. He pushed it back with one hand. His other hand was hidden under the windbreaker. The wall’s shadow fell across him.
    “Did you happen to see a girl come out of here?”
    “What girl?”
    “A little brunette. She’s probably carrying a suitcase.”
    “Yeah. I saw her.”
    He moved along the wall toward me, so close that I could see his eyes and the frightened savage lostness in them.
    “Which way did she go?”
    “That depends on what you want from her. What do you want from her?”
    His voice was quiet and calm, but I could sense the one-track fury behind it. He was one of the dangerous boys, born dry behind the ears and weaned on fury and grief.
    “You wouldn’t be Bozey?”
    He didn’t answer in words. His fist came out from underthe windbreaker, wearing something bright, and smashed at the side of my head.
    My legs forgot about me. I sat on the asphalt against the wall and looked up at his armed right fist, a shining steel hub on which the night revolved. His face leaned over me, stark and glazed with hatred.
    “Bow down, God damn you, sluff. I’m Bozey all right. Bow down and kiss my feet.”
    His bright fist drove downward at my face. I slipped the punch somehow and heard metal jar on stone. I tried to get to my feet. But my legs were made of old rope and worn-out rubber. The third blow found me, and the night revolved more quickly, like dirty water going down a drain.
    When I came to, I was in my car, trying to turn the trunk key in the ignition. The street was deserted, and that was just as well. I drove like a drunk for a couple of blocks, weaving from curb to curb. Then my vision cleared and steadied.
    Crossing the main street, I saw my bleeding face in the mirror over the windshield. It looked curiously lopsided. I glanced at my wristwatch to see what time it was. My wrist was bare. I shook myself down and found that my wallet was missing. But my .38 was still in the glove compartment. I transferred it to the side pocket of my jacket.

 
    CHAPTER 11 :
Kerrigan’s house stood on a slope
in the northeastern part of the city. I U-turned in the intersection above it and parked in the slanting street. It was a street of elderly homes with spacious lawns, shadowed by trees and well-clipped shrubbery. Seen from above, the tiled roofs floated in a dark green cascade of foliage. It was getting late, and most of the houses were dark. Kerrigan’swasn’t. The red Ford convertible was standing in front of it.
    I left the sidewalk, waded through dew-dense grass to the side of the next house, and stepped over a low field stone wall into Kerrigan’s yard. The terraced lawn was splashed with light from the windows. There was a rumor of voices inside the house. The windows were too high for me to see through. I moved along the wall toward the front. There were two voices, a man’s and a woman’s. The man’s voice was pitched almost as high as the woman’s.
    The front veranda was a deep railed platform partly shaded with split-bamboo screening. It was further shielded from the street by a great old monkey-puzzle tree that grew in front of it. I jumped for the railing, caught it, pulled myself up and over.
    From where I