Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (18 page)

 
          
Spanner’s
face was mottled with anger, his mouth half open to speak.

 
          
Humphreys
cut him off. “That makes sense, Joe. It’s not good law enforcement, but we’ve
got to compromise. The thing is to save Sampson’s life. What say we get back to
town now?”

 
          
He
stood up. The sheriff followed him out.

 
          
“Can
we trust Spanner not to make his own arrangements?”

 
          
“I
think so,” Graves said slowly. “Humphreys will keep an eye on him.”

 
          
“Humphreys
sounds like a good head.”

 
          
“The best.
I worked with him for seven-odd years, and I
never caught him in a bad mistake. I got him the appointment when I resigned.”
There was some regret in his voice.

 
          
“You
should have stuck with the work,” I said. “You got a lot of satisfaction out of
it.”

 
          
“And damned little money!
I stuck with it for ten years, and
I ended up in debt.” He gave me a sly look. “Why did you quit the Long Beach
force, Lew?”

 
          
“The
money wasn’t the main thing. I couldn’t stand
podex
osculation. And I didn’t like dirty politics. Anyway, I didn’t quit, I was
fired.”

 
          
“All
right, you win.”

 
          
He
glanced at his watch again. It was nearly eight thirty.
“Time
to get on our horse.”

 
          
Alan
Taggert was in the study, in a tan trench coat that bunched at the waist and
made his shoulders look huge. He brought his hands out of his pockets with a
gun in each fist. Graves took one, and Taggert kept the other.
They were.32 target pistols with slender blue-steel snouts and
prominent sights.

 
          
“Remember,”
I said, for
Taggert’s
benefit, “no shooting unless
you’re shot at.”

 
          
“Aren’t
you coming along?”

 
          
“No.”
I said to Graves: “You know the corner at Fryers Road?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“There’s
no cover around?”

 
          
“Not
a thing. The open beach on one
side,
and the cut-bank
on the other.”

 
          
“There
wouldn’t be. You go ahead in your car. I’ll tag along behind and park a mile or
so down the highway.”

 
          
“You’re
not going to try a fast one?”

 
          
“Not
me. I just want to see him go by. I’ll meet you at the filling station at the
city limits afterward.
The Last Chance.”

 
          
“Right.”
Graves twirled the knobs of the wall safe.

 
          
From
the city limits to Fryers Road the highway was four-lane, a mile-long shelf cut
into the bluffs that stood along the shore. It was divided in the middle by a
strip of turf between concrete curbs. At the intersection with Fryers Road the
turf ended and the highway narrowed to three lanes. Graves’s Studebaker made a
quick U turn at the intersection and parked with its lights burning on the
shoulder of the highway.

 
          
It
was a good place for the purpose, a bare corner rimmed on the right by a line
of white posts. The entrance to Fryers Road was a gray-black hole in the side
of the bluff. There wasn’t a house in sight, or a tree. The cars on the highway
were few and far between.

 
          
It
was ten minutes to nine by my dashboard clock. I waved to Taggert and Graves
and drove on past them. It was seven tenths of a mile to the next side road. I
checked it on my mileage. Two hundred yards beyond this side road a parking
space for sightseers had been built up over the beach on the right side of the
highway. I turned off and parked with the lights out and the nose of the car
pointed south. It was seven minutes to nine. If everything went on schedule, the
pay-off car should pass me in ten minutes.

 
          
The
fog closed around the car when it stopped, rising from the shore like an
impossible gray tide. A few pairs of headlights went north through the fog like
the eyes of deep-sea fish. Below the guardrail the sea breathed and gargled in
the darkness. At two minutes after nine the rushing headlights came around the
curve from the direction of Fryers Road.

 
          
The
plunging car wheeled sharply before it reached me and turned up the side road
to the left. I couldn’t see its color or shape but I heard it losing rubber.
The driver’s technique seemed familiar.

 
          
Leaving
my lights out, I drove across the highway and along its shoulder to the side
road. Before I reached it I heard three sounds, remote and muffled by the fog.
The banshee wail of brakes, the sound of a shot, the ascending roar
of a motor picking up speed.

 
          
The
trough of the side road was filled with diffused white light. I stopped my car
a few feet short of the intersection. Another car came out of the side road and
turned left in front of me toward Los Angeles. It was a long-nosed convertible
painted light cream. I couldn’t see the driver through the blurred side window,
but I thought I saw a dark mass of woman’s hair. I wasn’t in position to give
chase, and I couldn’t have anyway.

 
          
I
switched on my fog lamps and turned up the road.
A few
hundred yards from the highway a car was standing with two of its wheels in the
ditch.
I parked behind it and got out with the gun in my hand. It was a
black limousine, a pre-war Lincoln custom job. The engine was idling and the
lights were on. The license number was 62 S 895. I opened the front door with
my left hand, my gun cocked in my right.

 
          
A
little man leaned toward me, peering into the fog with intent dead eyes. I caught
him before he fell out. I’d been feeling death in my bones for twenty-four
hours.

 
          
He
was still wearing his leather cap sharply tilted on the left side of his head.
There was a round hole in the cap above his left ear. The left side of his face
was peppered with black powder burns. His head had been knocked askew by the
force of the bullet, and rolled on his shoulder when I pushed him upright. His
black-nailed hands slipped off the steering wheel and dangled at his sides.

 
          
Holding
him up in the seat with one hand, I went through his pockets with the other.
The side pockets of his leather windbreaker contained a windproof lighter
smelling of gasoline, a cheap wooden case half full of cigarettes rolled in
brown wheat-straw paper, and a four-inch spring-knife. There was a worn
sharkskin wallet in the hip pocket of his
levis
,
containing eighteen or twenty dollars in small bills and a California driver’s
license recently issued to one Lawrence Becker. The address on the license was
a cheap Los Angeles hotel teetering on the edge of Skid Row. It wouldn’t be his
address, and Lawrence Becker wouldn’t be his name.

 
          
The
left side pocket of the
levis
held a dirty comb in a
leatherette case. The other pocket held a heavy bunch of car keys on a chain -
keys for every make of car from Chevrolet to Cadillac - and a half-used book of
matches labeled: “Souvenir of The Corner, Cocktails and Steaks, Highway 101
South of
Buenavista
.” He had nothing on under his
windbreaker but a T-shirt.

 
          
There
were a few short marijuana butts in the dashboard ash tray, but the rest of the
car was as clean as a whistle. Not even a registration card in the glove
compartment,
nor
a hundred thousand dollars in
moderate-sized bills.

 
          
I
put the things back in his pockets and propped him up in the seat, slamming the
door to hold him. I looked back once before I got into my car. The lights of
the Lincoln were still burning, the idling motor still sending out a steady
trickle of vapor from the exhaust. The dead man hunched at the wheel looked ready
to start on a long, fast trip to another part of the country.

 
          
Graves’s
Studebaker was parked by the pumps at the filling station. Graves and Taggert
were standing beside it and came running when I drove up. Their faces were pale
and slick with excitement.

 
          
“It
was a black limousine,” Graves said. “We drove away slow and saw him stop at
the corner. I couldn’t see his face, but he was wearing a cap and a leather
windbreaker.”

 
          
“He
still is.”

 
          
“Did
you see him pass you?”
Taggert’s
voice was so tense he
whispered.

 
          
“He
turned off before he got to me. He’s sitting in his car on the next side road
with a bullet in his head.”

 
          
“Good
Christ!” Graves cried. “You didn’t shoot him, Lew?”

 
          
“Somebody
else did. A cream convertible came out of the side road a minute after the
shot. I think a woman was driving. She headed for L. A. Now, are you sure he
got the money?”

 
          
“I
saw him pick it up.”

 
          
“He
hasn’t got it
any more
; so one of two things
happened. It was a heist, or his partners double-crossed him. If he was
highjacked
, his partners don’t get the hundred grand. If
they double-crossed him, they’ll double-cross us. Either way it’s bad for
Sampson.”

 
          
“What
do we do now?” Taggert said.

 
          
Graves
answered him. “We take the wraps off the case. Give the police the go-ahead.
Post a reward. I’ll see Mrs. Sampson about it.”

 
          
“One
thing, Bert,” I said. “We’ve got to keep this shooting quiet - out of the
papers anyway. If
highjackers
did it, his partners
will blame us, and that’s the end of Sampson.”

 
          
“The dirty bastards!”
Graves’s voice was heavy and grim. “We
kept our side of the bargain.
If I could get my hands on them
-.”

 
          
“You
wouldn’t know it. All we have is a dead man in a rented car. You better start
with the sheriff; he won’t do much, but it’s a nice gesture.
Then
the highway patrol and the F. B. I. Get as many men on it as you can.”

 
          
I
released my emergency brake and let the car roll a few inches. Graves backed
away from the window. “Where do you think you’re going?”

 
          
“On a wild-goose chase.
Things look so bad for Sampson I
might as well.”

 
          
It
took me down the highway fifty miles to
Buenavista
.
The highway doubled as the town’s main street. It was lit by motel and tavern
signs and three theater fronts. Two of the three theaters advertised Mexican
films. The Mexicans lived off the land when the canneries were closed. The rest
of the townspeople lived off the Mexicans and the fishing fleet.

 
          
I
stopped in the middle of the town, in front of an overgrown cigar store that
sold guns, magazines, fishing tackle, draft beer, stationery, baseball gloves,
contraceptives, and cigars. Two dozen Mexican boys with grease-slicked ducktail
haircuts were swarming in and out of the store, drawn two ways by the pinball
machines in the back and the girls on the street. The girls went by in ribbons
and paints, cutting the air with their bosoms. The boys whistled and postured
or pretended to be uninterested.

 
          
I
called one to the curb and asked him where The Corner was. He conferred with
another
pachuco
. Then they both pointed south.

 
          
“Straight ahead, about five miles, where the road goes down to
White Beach.”

 
          
“There’s
a big red sign,” the other boy said, stretching out his arms enthusiastically.
“You can’t miss it.
The Corner.”

 
          
I
thanked them. They bowed and smiled and nodded as if I had done them a favor.

 
          
The
sign spelled out “The Corner” in red-neon script on the roof of a long, low
building to the right of the highway. A black-and-white sign at the
intersection beyond it pointed to White Beach. I parked in the asphalt parking-space
beside
the building. There were eight or ten other
cars in the lot, and a trailer truck on the Shoulder of the highway. Through
the half-curtained windows I could see a few couples at tables, a few others
dancing.

 
          
To
the left as I went in was a long bar, totally empty. The dining-room and dance
floor was to the right. I stood at the entrance as if I was looking for
somebody. There weren’t enough dancers to bring the big room to life. Their
music came from a jukebox. There was an empty orchestra stand at the back of
the room. All that was left of the big war nights were the foot-grained floor,
rows of unset rickety tables, odors like drunken memories in the walls,
tattered decorations like drunken hopes.

 
          
The
customers felt the depression in the room. Their faces groped for laughter and
enjoyment and couldn’t quite get hold of them. None of the faces meant anything
to me.

 
          
The
solitary waitress came up to me. She had dark eyes and a soft mouth, a good
body going to seed at twenty. You could read her history in her face and body.
She walked carefully as if she had sore feet.

 
          
“You
want a table, sir?”

 
          
“Thanks,
I’ll sit in the bar. You may be able to help me, though. I’m looking for a man
I met at a baseball game. I don’t see him.”

 
          
“What’s
his name?”

 
          
“That’s
the trouble - I don’t know his name. I owe him money on a bet, and he said he’d
meet me here. He’s a little fellow, about thirty-five, wears a leather
windbreaker and a leather cap. Blue eyes, sharp nose.”
And a
hole in his head, sister, a hole in his head.

 
          
“I
think I know who you mean. His name’s Eddie something, or something. He comes
in for a drink sometimes, but he hasn’t been in tonight.”

 
          
“He
said he’d meet me here. What time does he usually come in?”

 
          
“Later than this - around midnight.
He drives a truck,
don’t
he?”

 
          
“Yeah, a blue truck.”

 
          
“That’s
the one,” she said. “
I seen
it in the parking lot. He
was in a couple of nights ago, used our phone for a long-distance telephone
call. Three nights ago, it was. The boss didn’t like it - you never know how
much to collect when it runs over three minutes - but Eddie said he’d reverse
the charges, so the boss let him go ahead. How much do you owe him, anyway?”

 
          
“Plenty.
You don’t know where he was calling?”

 
          
“No.
It’s none of my business, anyway. Is it any of yours?”

 
          
“It’s
just that I want to get in touch with him. Then I could send him his money.”

 
          
“You
can leave it with the boss if you want to.”

 
          
“Where’s
he?”

 
          
“Chico, behind the bar.”

 
          
A
man at one of the tables rapped with his glass, and she walked carefully away.
I went into the bar.

 
          
The
bartender’s face, from receding hairline to slack jaw, was terribly long and
thin. His night of presiding at an empty bar made it seem even longer. “What’ll
it be?”

 
          
“A beer.”

 
          
His
jaw dropped another notch.
“Eastern or Western?”

 
          
“Eastern.”

 
          
“That’s
thirty-five, with the music.” His jaw recovered the lost ground. “We provide
the music.”

 
          
“Can
I get a sandwich?”

 
          
“Sure
thing,” he said, almost cheerfully. “What kind?”

 
          
“Bacon and egg.”

 
          
“O.
K.” He signaled the waitress through the open door.

 
          
“I’m
looking for a guy called Eddie,” I said.
“The one that phoned
me long-distance the other night.”

 
          
“You from Las Vegas?”

 
          
“Just
came from there.”

 
          
“How’s
business in L. V.?”

 
          
“Pretty slow.”

 
          
“That’s
too bad,” he said happily. “What were you looking for him for?”

 
          
“I
owe him some money. Does he live around here?”

 
          
“Yeah,
I think he does. I don’t know where, though. He
come
in once or twice with a blond dame.
Probably his wife.
He might come in tonight for all I know. Stick around.”

 
          
“Thanks,
I will.”

 
          
I
took my beer to a table beside the window, from which I could watch the parking
lot and the main entrance. After a while the waitress brought my sandwich. She
lingered even after I paid and tipped her.