Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (2 page)

 
          
A
Filipino houseboy in a white jacket appeared at the open French window.
“Your coffee, Mrs. Sampson.”

 
          
He
set down the silver coffee service on a low table by the chaise. He was little
and quick. The hair on his small round head was slick and black like a coating
of grease.

 
          
“Thank
you, Felix.” She was gracious to her servants or making an impression on me.
“Will you have some, Mr. Archer?”

 
          
“No, thanks.”

 
          
“Perhaps
you’d like a drink.”

 
          
“Not
before lunch. I’m the new-type detective.”

 
          
She
smiled and sipped her coffee. I got up and walked to the seaward end of the sun
deck. Below it the terraces descended in long green steps to the edge of the
bluff, which fell sharply down to the shore.

 
          
I
heard a splash around the corner of the house and leaned out over the railing.
The pool was on the upper terrace, an oval of green water set in blue tile. A
girl and a boy were playing tag, cutting the water like seals. The girl was
chasing the boy. He let her catch him.

 
          
Then
they were a man and a woman, and the moving scene froze in the sun. Only the
water
moved,
and the girl’s hands. She was standing
behind him with her arms around his waist. Her fingers moved over his ribs
gently as a harpist’s, clenched in the tuft of hair in the center of his chest.
Her face was hidden against his back. His face held pride and anger like a
blind bronze.

 
          
He
pushed her hands down and stepped away. Her face was naked then and terribly
vulnerable. Her arms hung down as if they had lost their purpose. She sat down
on the edge of the pool and dangled her feet in the water.

 
          
The
dark young man did a flip and a half from the springboard. She didn’t look. The
drops fell off the tips of her hair like tears and ran down into her bosom.

 
          
Mrs.
Sampson called me by name. “You haven’t had lunch?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Lunch for three in the patio, then, Felix.
I’ll eat up here
as usual.”

 
          
Felix
bowed slightly and started away. She called him back. “Bring the photo of Mr.
Sampson from my dressing-room. You’ll have to know what he looks like, won’t
you, Mr. Archer?”

 
          
The
face in the leather folder was fat, with thin gray hair and a troubled mouth.
The thick nose tried to be bold and succeeded in being obstinate. The smile
that folded the puffed eyelids and creased the sagging cheeks was fixed and
forced. I’d seen such smiles in mortuaries on the false face of death. It
reminded me that I was going to grow old and die.

 
          
“A
poor thing, but mine own,” said Mrs. Sampson.

 
          
Felix
let out a little sound that could have been a snicker, grunt, or sigh. I
couldn’t think of anything to add to his comment.

 
          
He
served lunch in the patio, a red-tiled triangle between the house and the
hillside. Above the masonry retaining wall the slope was planted with ground
cover, ageratum, and trailing lobelia in an
unbreaking
blue-green wave.

 
          
The
dark young man was there when Felix led me out. He had laid away his anger and
his pride, changed to a fresh light suit, and looked at ease. He was tall
enough when he stood up to make me feel slightly undersized - six foot three or
four. His grip was hard.

 
          
“Alan
Taggert’s
my name. I pilot Sampson’s plane.”

 
          
“Lew
Archer.”

 
          
He
rotated a small drink in his left hand. “What are you drinking?”

 
          
“Milk.”

 
          
“No
kidding? I thought you were a detective.”

 
          
“Fermented
mare’s milk, that is.”

 
          
He
had a pleasant white smile. “Mine’s gin and bitters. I picked up the habit at
Port Moresby.”

 
          
“Done
a good deal of flying?”

 
          
“Fifty-five missions.
And a couple of
thousand hours.”

 
          
“Where?”

 
          
“Mostly in the
Carolines
.
I had a
P-38.”

 
          
He
said it with loving nostalgia, like a girl’s name.

 
          
The
girl came out then, wearing a black-striped dress, narrow in the right places,
full in the others. Her dark-red hair, brushed and dried, bubbled around her
head. Her wide green eyes were dazzling and strange in her brown face, like
light eyes in an Indian.

 
          
Taggert
introduced her. She was Sampson’s daughter Miranda. She seated us at a metal
table under a canvas umbrella that grew out of the table’s center on an iron
stem. I watched her over my salmon mayonnaise; a tall girl whose movements had
a certain awkward charm, the kind who developed slowly and was worth waiting
for.
Puberty around fifteen, first marriage or affair at
twenty or twenty-one.
A few hard years outgrowing romance and changing
from girl to woman; then the complete fine woman at twenty-eight or thirty. She
was about twenty-one, a little too old to be Mrs. Sampson’s daughter.

 
          
“My
stepmother” - she said, as if I’d been thinking aloud - “my stepmother is
always going to extremes.”

 
          
“Do
you mean me, Miss Sampson? I’m a very moderate type.”

 
          
“Not you, especially.
Everything she does is extreme. Other
people fall off horses without being paralyzed from the waist down.
But not Elaine.
I think it’s psychological. She isn’t the
raving beauty she used to be, so she retired from competition. Falling off the
horse gave her a chance to do it. For all I know, she deliberately fell off.”

 
          
Taggert
laughed shortly. “Come off it, Miranda. You’ve been reading a book.”

 
          
She
looked at him haughtily. “You’ll never be accused of that.”

 
          
“Is
there a psychological explanation for my being here?” I said.

 
          
“I’m
not exactly sure why you’re here. Is it to track Ralph
down,
or something like that?”

 
          
“Something
like
that.”

 
          
“I
suppose she wants to get something on him. You have to admit
it’s
pretty extreme to call in a detective because a man stays away overnight.”

 
          
“I’m
discreet, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

 
          
“Nothing’s
worrying me,” she said sweetly. “I merely made a psychological observation.”

 
          
The
Filipino servant moved unobtrusively across the patio. Felix’s steady smile was
a mask behind which his personality waited in isolation, peeping furtively from
the depths of his bruised-looking black eyes. I had the feeling that his
pointed ears heard everything I said, counted my breathing, and could pick up
the beat of my heart on a clear day.

 
          
Taggert
had been looking uncomfortable, and changed the subject abruptly. “I don’t
think I ever met a real-life detective before.”

 
          
“I’d
give you my autograph, only I sign it with an ‘X.’”

 
          
“Seriously,
though, I’m interested in detectives. I thought I’d like to be one at one time
- before I went up in a plane. I guess most kids dream about it.”

 
          
“Most
kids don’t get stuck with the dream.”

 
          
“Why?
Don’t you like your work?”

 
          
“It
keeps me out of mischief. Let’s see, you were with Mr. Sampson when he dropped
out of sight?”

 
          
“Right.”

 
          
“How
was he dressed?”

 
          
“Sports clothes.
Harris
tweed
jacket, brown wool shirt, tan slacks, brogues. No hat.”

 
          
“And
when was this exactly?”

 
          
“About
three-thirty - when we landed at Burbank yesterday afternoon. They had to move
another crate before I could park the plane. I always put it away myself; it’s
got some special gadgets we wouldn’t want stolen. Mr. Sampson went to call the
hotel to send out a limousine.”

 
          
“What
hotel?”

 
          
‘The
Valerio
.”

 
          
“The pueblo off Wilshire?”

 
          
“Ralph
keeps a bungalow there,” Miranda said. “He likes it because it’s quiet.”

 
          
“When
I got out to the main entrance,” Taggert continued, “Mr. Sampson was gone. I
didn’t think much about it. He’d been drinking pretty hard, but that was
nothing unusual, and he could still look after himself. It made me a little
sore, though. There I was stranded in Burbank, simply because he couldn’t wait
five minutes. It’s a three-dollar taxi ride to the
Valerio
,
and I couldn’t afford that.”

 
          
He
glanced at Miranda to see if he was saying too much. She looked amused.

 
          
“Anyway,”
he said, “I took a bus to the hotel.
Three buses, about half
an hour on each.
And then he wasn’t there. I waited around until nearly
dark, and then I flew the plane home.”

 
          
“Did
he ever get to the
Valerio
?”

 
          
“No.
He hadn’t been there at all.”

 
          
“What
about his luggage?”

 
          
“He
didn’t carry luggage.”

 
          
‘Then
he wasn’t planning to stay overnight?”

 
          
“It
doesn’t follow,” Miranda put in. “He kept whatever he needed in the bungalow at
the
Valerio
.”

 
          
“Maybe
he’s there now.”

 
          
“No.
Elaine’s been phoning every hour on the hour.”

 
          
I
turned to Taggert. “Didn’t he say anything about his plans?”

 
          
“He
was going to spend the night at the
Valerio
.”

 
          
“How
long was he by himself when you were parking the plane?”

 
          
“Fifteen minutes or so.
Not more than twenty.”

 
          
“The
limousine from the
Valerio
would’ve had to get there
pretty fast. He may never have called the hotel at all.”

 
          
“Somebody
might have met him at the airport,” Miranda said.