The Way Some People Die by Ross MacDonald

gesture, though the muscles bulged like angry veins in his sleeves.
    On his feet he looked smaller. His legs were proportionately shorter than his body. I stayed in my chair. Dowser would be more likely to do what I wanted him to do if he could look down at the top of my head. There were two-inch heels on the sandals that clasped his feet.
    “A little time,” I repeated. “Isn’t that what Tarantine needs to get lost in Mexico? Or wherever he’s gone.”
    “I can extradite him,” he said with his canine grin. “All I need to know is where he is.”
    “And if she doesn’t know?”
    “She knows. She’ll remember. A man don’t leave behind a piece like her. Not Joey. He loves his flesh.”
    “Speaking of flesh, what have you been doing to the girl?”
    “Nothing much.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Blaney pushed her around a little bit. I guess now I got my strength up I’ll push her around a little bit myself.” He punched himself in the abdomen, not very hard.
    “I wish you’d let me talk to her,” I said.
    “Why all the eager interest, baby?”
    “Tarantine sapped me.”
    “He didn’t sap you in the moneybags, baby. That’s where you get the real agony.”
    “No doubt. But here’s my idea. The girl has a notion I might be on her side.” If Galley had that notion, she was right. “If you muss my hair and shove me in alongside her, it should convince her. I suppose you’ve got her locked in some dungeon?”
    “You want to stool for me, is that the pitch?”
    “Call it that. When do I get my five hundred?”
    He dug deep into the pocket of his robe, slipped a bill from the gold money-clip and tossed it on the table. “There’s your money.”
    I rose and picked it up against my will, telling myself itwas justified under the circumstances. Taking his money was the only way I knew to make Dowser trust me. I folded the bill and tucked it into my watch pocket, separate from my other money, promising myself that at the earliest opportunity I’d bet it on the horses.
    “It might be a good idea,” he said. “You have a talk with the girl before we rough her up too much. I kind of like her looks the way she is. Maybe you do too, huh?” The bulging eyes shone with a lewd cunning.
    “She’s a lovely piece,” I said.
    “Well, don’t start getting any ideas. I’ll put you in where she is, see, and all you do is talk to her. Along the lines we discussed. I got a mike in there, and a one-way window. I put the one-way window in for the politicians. They come to visit me sometimes, see. I take my own sex straight.”
    So does a coyote, I thought, and did not say.

CHAPTER
15 :     
After the sunswept patio, the
room was very dim behind three-quarters-drawn drapes. A thin partition of light fell through it from the uncovered strip of window, dividing it into two unequal sections. The section to my right held a dressing-table and a long chair upholstered in dark red satin. I saw myself in the mirror above the dressing-table. I looked disheveled enough without even trying. The heavy door slammed shut and a key turned in the lock.
    In the section to my left there were more chairs, a wide bed with a red silk padded head, a portable cellarette beside the bed in lieu of a bedside table. Galley Tarantine crouched on the bed like a living piece of the dimness andthe stillness. Only the amber discs of her eyes showed life. Then the point of her tongue made a slow circuit of her lips at the pace of a second hand:
    “This is an unexpected pleasure. I didn’t know I was going to have a cellmate. The right sex, too.” There was some irony there. Her voice, low and intense, was well adapted to it.
    “You’re very observant.” I went to the window and found that it was a casement, but bolted top and bottom on the outside.
    “It isn’t much use,” she said. “Even if you smashed it, the place is too well guarded to get away from. Dowser plays with gunmen the way other spoiled little boys play with