The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online

“Turn me loose, I’ll do it myself. What were you doing in Lucy’s room?”
    “Something’s happened to her.”
    Bowed and immobilized by my hold, he had to crane his neck sideways to look at me. His black forehead was sprinkled with droplets of sweat, and his eyes were large and bright with expectations of disaster. “You’re a liar. Let me go.”
    “Will you stand and talk to me, like a sensible man?”
    “No.” But the word lacked force. The brightness of his eyes was glazing, would turn to tears in a minute. He was a boy in a man’s frame. I released him.
    He straightened slowly, rubbing his cramped arm. Beyond him, on the other side of the court, a ragged line of spectators was moving slowly towards the lure of violence.
    “Come into the office, Alex.”
    He stiffened. “Who’s going to make me?”
    “Nobody’s going to make you. Come on, anyway.”
    “I don’t have to.”
    “How old are you, Alex?”
    “Nineteen, going on twenty.”
    “Ever been in trouble?”
    “I never have. Ask my mother.”
    “Lucy your girl friend?”
    “She’s not my girl friend. We’re going to get married.” He added, with pathetic irrelevance: “I can support a wife.”
    “Sure you can.”
    His bright gaze was painful on my face. “Is something the matter? Why did you go in there?”
    I groped back for the impulse that had made me knock on Lucy’s door and go in. “To talk to her. To warn her to leave town.”
    “We are leaving, tonight. That’s what I’m waiting for. She came to get her things.” As if it were being turned by a long-handled wrench against his will, his head turned on his shoulders to look at the closed door of number seven. “Why doesn’t she come out? Is she sick?”
    I said: “She’s not coming out.”
    The gallery of onlookers from the trailers was straggling across the court, uttering small sounds of menace and excitement. I pulled the office door open and held it for Alex. He went in past me, moving nothing but his legs.
    The man who loved Ethel and nobody else was sitting on the studio bed with his back to the door, a half-empty Coke bottle in his fist. He rose and padded to the counter, casting a backward glance at the studio bed. From the cover of a magazine spread open on its pillow, a bare-bosomed woman screamed soundlessly for assistance.
    Disregarding her pleas, the pink-haired man said: “Whatcan I do for you?” Then his slow nerves reacted to the black boy: “What does he want?”
    “The telephone,” I said.
    “Local call?”
    “The police. Do you know the number?”
    He knew it. “Trouble?”
    “In number seven. Go and take a look. I wouldn’t go in, though. Don’t let the others, either.”
    He leaned on the counter, his belly oozing over its edge like cottage cheese in a bag. “What happened?”
    “Look for yourself. Give me the telephone first.”
    He handed me the telephone, hustled to the door and out. Alex tried to follow him. I kept my right hand on the boy’s arm and dialed with my left. When he heard what I had to say to the desk sergeant he fell forward across the counter, catching his weight on his forearms. The upper half of his body was shaken by an inaudible sobbing. The desk sergeant said that he would send a car right out.
    I shifted my hand to the boy’s back. He shied away from it as if I were trying to stab him.
    “What were you doing out there, Alex?”
    “Minding my own business.”
    “Waiting for Lucy?”
    “If you know, you don’t have to ask me.”
    “How long were you waiting?”
    “Nearly half an hour. I drove around the block a couple of times and came back.”
    I looked at my watch: five thirty-one. “She went in about five o’clock?”
    “It was just about five.”
    “Did she go in alone?”
    “Yes. Alone.”
    “Did anybody else go in afterwards?”
    “Not that I saw.”
    “Did anybody come out?”
    “You did. I saw you come out.”
    “Besides me. Before me.”
    “I didn’t see. I drove around the