Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (9 page)

 
          
“I
can’t afford to guess.” I turned to Taggert. “Can you fly Miranda up tonight?”

 
          
“I
just phoned Santa Teresa. The airport’s fogged in. First thing in the morning,
though.”

 
          
“Then
tell her over the phone. I have a possible lead and I’m following it up. Graves
had better contact the police, quietly.
The local police and
the Los Angeles police.
And the F. B. I.”

 
          
“The F. B. I.?”
Miranda whispered.

 
          
“Yes,”
I said. “Kidnapping is a federal offense.”

 
          
When
I went back to the bar, a young Mexican in a tuxedo was leaning against the
piano with a guitar. His small tenor, plaintive and remote, was singing a
Spanish bullfighting song. His fingers marched thunderously in the strings.
Mrs. Estabrook was watching him and barely noticed me when I sat down.

 
          
She
clapped loudly when the song was finished, and beckoned him to our booth.
“
Babalu
.
Pretty
please.”
She handed him a dollar.

 
          
He
bowed and smiled, and returned to his singing.

 
          
“It’s
Ralph’s favorite song,” she said. “Domingo sings it so well. He’s got real
Spanish blood in his veins.”

 
          
“About this friend of yours, Ralph.”

 
          
“What
about him?”

 
          
“He
wouldn’t object to your being here with me?”

 
          
“Don’t
be silly. I want you to meet him some time. I know you’ll like him.”

 
          
“What
does he do?”

 
          
“He’s
more or less retired. He’s got money.”

 
          
“Why
don’t you marry him?”

 
          
She
laughed harshly. “Didn’t I tell you I had a husband? But you don’t have to
worry about him. It’s purely a business proposition.”

 
          
“I
didn’t know you were in business.”

 
          
“Did
I say I was in business?” She laughed again, much too alertly, and changed the
subject: “It’s funny you suggesting I should marry Ralph. We’re both married to
other people. Anyway, our friendship is on a different level. You know, more
spiritual.”

 
          
She
was sobering up on me. I raised my glass.
“To friendship.
On a different level.”

 
          
While
she was still drinking, I held up two fingers to the waitress. The second drink
fixed her. Her face went to pieces as if by its own weight. Her eyes went dull
and unblinking. Her mouth hung open in a fixed yawn, the scarlet lips
contrasting with the pink-and-white interior. She brought it together numbly
and whispered: “I don’t feel so good.”

 
          
“I’ll
take you home.”

 
          
“You’re
nice.”

 
          
I
helped her to her feet. The waitress held the door open, with a condoling smile
for Mrs. Estabrook and a sharp glance at me. Mrs. Estabrook stumbled across the
sidewalk like an old woman leaning on a cane that wasn’t there. I held her up
on her anesthetized legs, and we made it to the car. Getting her in was like
loading a sack of coal. Her head rolled into the corner between the door and
the back of the seat. I started the car and headed for Pacific Palisades.

 
          
The
motion of the car revived her after a while. “Got to get home,” she said dully.
“You know where I live?”

 
          
“You
told me.”

 
          
“Got to climb on the treadmill in the morning.
Crap! I
should weep if he throws me out of pictures. I got independent means.”

 
          
“You
look like a businesswoman,” I said encouragingly.

 
          
“You’re
nice, Archer.” The line was beginning to get me down.
“Taking
care of an old hag like me.
You wouldn’t like me if I told you where I
got my money.”

 
          
“Try
me.”

 
          
“But
I’m not telling you.” Her laugh was ugly and loose, in a low register. I
thought I caught overtones of mockery in it, but they may have been in my head.
“You’re too nice a boy.”

 
          
Yeah,
I said to myself, a clean-cut American type.
Always willing
to lend a hand to help a lady fall flat on her face in the gutter.

 
          
The
lady passed out again. At least she said nothing more. It was a lonely drive
down the midnight boulevard with her half-conscious body. In the spotted coat
it was like a sleeping animal beside me in the seat, a leopard or a wildcat
heavy with age. It wasn’t really old - fifty at most - but it was full of the
years, full and fermenting with bad memories. She’d told me a number of things
about herself, but not what I wanted to know, and I was too sick of her to
probe deeper. The one sure thing I knew about her she hadn’t had to tell me:
she was bad company for Sampson or any incautious man. Her playmates were
dangerous - one rough, one smooth. And if anything had happened to Sampson
she’d know it or find out.

 
          
She
was awake when I parked in front of her house. “Put the car in the drive. Would
you, honey?”

 
          
I
backed across the road and took the car up the driveway. She needed help to
climb the steps to the door, and handed me the key to open it. “You come in. I
been trying to think of something I want to drink.”

 
          
“You’re
sure it’s all right?
Your husband?”

 
          
Laughter
growled in her throat. “We haven’t lived together for years.”

 
          
I
followed her into the hallway. It was thick with darkness and her two odors,
musk and alcohol, half animal and half human. I felt slippery waxed floor under
my feet and wondered if she’d fall. She moved in her own house with the blind
accuracy of a sleepwalker. I felt my way after her into a room to the left,
where she switched on a lamp.

 
          
The
room it brought out of darkness was nothing like the insane red room she had
made for Ralph Sampson. It was big and cheerful, even at night behind closed
Venetian blinds. A solid middle-class room with post-Impressionist
reproductions on the walls, built-in bookshelves, books on them, a
radio-phonograph and a record cabinet, a glazed brick fireplace with a heavy
sectional chesterfield curved in front of it. The only strangeness was in the
pattern of the cloth that covered the chesterfield and the armchair under the
lamp: brilliant green tropical plants against a white desert sky, with single
eyes staring between the fronds. The pattern changed as I looked at it. The
eyes disappeared and reappeared again. I sat down on a batch of them.

 
          
She
was at the portable bar in the corner beside the fireplace. “What are you
drinking?”

 
          
“Whisky and water.”

 
          
She
brought me my glass. Half of its contents slopped out en route, leaving a trail
of dark splotches across the light-green carpet. She sat down beside me,
depressing the cushioned seat. Her dark head swayed toward my shoulder and
lodged there. I could see the few iron-gray strands the hairdresser had left in
her hair so it wouldn’t look dyed.

 
          
“I
can’t think of anything I want to drink,” she whined. “Don’t let me fall.”

 
          
I
put one arm around her shoulders, which were almost as wide as mine. She leaned
hard against me. I felt the stir and swell of her breathing, gradually slowing
down.

 
          
“Don’t
try to do anything to me, honey, I’m dead tonight. Some other night….” Her
voice was soft and somehow girlish, but blurred. Blurred like the submarine
glints of youth in her eyes.

 
          
Her
eyes closed. I could see the faint tremor of her heartbeat in the veins of her
withering eyelids. Their fringe of curved dark lashes was a vestige of youth
and beauty which made her ruin seem final and hard. It was easier to feel sorry
for her when she was sleeping.

 
          
To
make certain that she was, I gently raised one of her eyelids. The marbled
eyeball stared widely at nothing. I took away my arm and let her body subside
on the cushions. Her breasts hung askew. Her stockings were twisted. She began
to snore.

 
          
I
went into the next room, closed the door behind me, and turned on the light. It
shone down from the ceiling on a bleached mahogany refectory table with
artificial flowers in the center, a china cabinet at one side, a built-in
buffet at the other, six heavy chairs ranged around the wall on their haunches.
I turned the light off and went into the kitchen, which was neat and well
equipped.

 
          
I
wondered for an instant if I had misjudged the woman. There were honest
astrologists - and plenty of harmless drunks. Her house was like a hundred
thousand others in Los Angeles County, almost too typical to be true.
Except for the huge garage and the bulldog that guarded it.

 
          
The
bathroom had walls of pastel-blue tile and a square blue tub. The cabinet over
the sink was stuffed and heaped with tonics and patent medicines, creams and
paints and powders,
luminol
,
nembutal
,
veronal
. The
hypochondriac bottles and boxes overflowed on the back of the sink, the laundry
hamper, and the toilet top. The clothes in the hamper were female. There was
only one toothbrush in the holder.
A razor but no shaving
cream, nor any other trace of a man.

 
          
The
bedroom next to the bathroom was flowered and prettied in pink like a prewar
sentimental hope. There was a book on the stars on the bedside table. The
clothes in the closet were women’s, and there were a great many of them, with
Saks and
Magnin
labels. The undergarments and
night-clothes in the chest of drawers were peach and baby blue and black lace.

 
          
I
looked under the twisted mass of stockings in the second drawer and found the
core of strangeness in the house. It was a row of narrow packages held together
with elastic bands. The packages contained money, all in bills, ones and fives
and tens. Most of the bills were old and greasy. If all the packages assayed
like the one I examined, the bottom of the drawer was lined with eight or ten
thousand dollars.

 
          
I
sat on my heels and looked at all that money. A bedroom drawer was hardly a
good place to keep it. But it was safer than a bank for people who couldn’t
declare their income.

 
          
The
burring ring of a telephone cut the silence like a dentist’s drill. It struck a
nerve, and I jumped. But I shut the drawer before I went into the hall where
the telephone was. There was no sound from the woman in the living-room.

 
          
I
muffled my voice with my tie. “Hello.”

 
          
“Mr.
Troy?” It was a woman.

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“Is
Fay there?” Her speech was rapid and clipped. “This is Betty.”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Listen,
Mr. Troy. Fay was
fried
in the
Valerio
about an hour ago. The man she was with could be plain-clothes. He said he was
taking her home. You wouldn’t want him around when the truck goes through. And
you know Fay when she’s oiled.”

 
          
“Yes,”
I said, and risked: “Where are you now?”

 
          
“The Piano, of course.”

 
          
“Is
Ralph Sampson there?”

 
          
Her
answer was a hiccup of surprise. She was silent for a moment. At the other end
of the line I could hear the murmur of people, the clatter of dishes.
Probably a restaurant.

 
          
She
recovered her voice: “Why ask me? I haven’t seen him lately?”