The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

thick-chested frame Alex looked smaller and thinner. His gaze was turned inward. He seemed to be seeing himself for the first time as he was: a black boy tangled in white law, so vulnerable he hardly dared move a muscle.
    Behind the counter, the key-clerk was comforting himself with the remnant of his Coke. I sat on the studio bed beside him:
    “I’d like to get that straight about the
keys.”
    “Questions!” He belched pathetically. Brown liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth into a red rash on his chin. “You prob’ly won’t believe me, I look like a healthy constitution, only I got delicate nerves. I’m still on partial disability from the Army, and that’s the proof of it. I can’t take all this cross-questioning and stuff. The way the lieutenant looked at me, you’d think I done her in.” He pouted like a bloated dilapidated imbecile little boy.
    “When did you see her last?”
    “Must of been around five o’clock, I didn’t look at the time.”
    “She needed another key?”
    “That’s correct. I asked her what happened to the one I give her when she checked in. She said she must of lost it. I said that would be fifty cents extra and she paid me the money right then. She said she was checking out. Little did I know she had a rendezvoose with murder.”
    “Did she seem disturbed?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t specially notice. I was the one that should of been disturbed. Why’d she want to comehere to get herself chopped? They’d do it for her down on Hidalgo any day of the week.”
    “It certainly was tough on you,” I said, “and inconsiderate of her.”
    “You’re bloody right.” Self-pity gurgled in his throat like a hemorrhage beyond the reach of irony or cautery. “How did I know she was passing herself for white? That she was going to bleed all over my floor? I got to clean it up.”
    On the other side of the counter Alex sat with his guard. All I could see of him was the top of his head, but I could hear him breathing.
    “After the girl went into her room,” I said, “did anybody else go in?”
    “Not that I saw. I don’t pay no attention half the time. They go and come.” The phrase pleased him, and he repeated: “Go and come.”
    “You didn’t see anybody?”
    “Naw. I was sitting down in here passing the time. They come and go.” A flash of anger galvanized him feebly: “I
wisht
I seen him. Just lemme get my hands on the guy that done it and mussed that floor—”
    “You think it was a man?”
    “Who said so?”
    “You said ‘guy.’ ”
    “Only a manner of speaking. Anyway, why would a woman cut a woman?” Leaning towards me, he said in a loud stage whisper: “You want my honest opinion, I think that young buck done it. They’re always cutting their wenches, you know that.”
    There was a scuffle of feet. Alex Norris came over the counter head first and lighted on all fours in front of us. Scrambling to his feet, he landed one back-handed blow onthe side of the clerk’s head. The clerk screamed gently and swooned across my legs.
    Alex dived for the open window. Unable to get to my feet, I yelled: “Stop it, Alex! Come back!”
    He kicked out the screen and hoisted one leg over the sill. The coat of his blue suit was split down the back.
    His guard strode round the end of the counter, lifting the right side of his uniform blouse. His black police-holster snapped open and a revolver popped up in his hand like a lethal jack-in-the-box. Its safety clicked off. Alex was still in the window, struggling to force his other leg through the narrow opening. He was a sitting duck, and the range was almost point-blank.
    I rolled the key-clerk off my knees to the floor and stepped across the line of fire. The trigger-happy guard cursed me and said: “Get out of the way.”
    Alex was out of the window. I went out after him. He was pounding across a field of tall dry grass towards the fence that ran along the highway. It was a seven-foot wire fence. He ran up it