Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (28 page)

 
          
“Put
it away.”

 
          
“You
don’t like me, do you?”

 
          
“Poison
isn’t my drink. Not that you don’t have your points. You seem to have some
brains, on a low level.”

 
          
“Thanks
for nothing, my intellectual friend.”

 
          
“And
you’ve been around.”

 
          
“I’m
not a virgin, if you’re talking about that. I haven’t been since I was eleven.
Eddie saw a chance to turn a dollar. But I never did my living below the belt.
The music saved me from that.”

 
          
“It’s
too bad it didn’t save you from this.”

 
          
“I
took my chance. It didn’t work out. What makes you think I care one way or the
other?”

 
          
“You
care about this other person. You want him to have the money, no matter what
happens to you.”

 
          
“I
told you to forget that.” After a pause she said: “You could let me go and keep
the money yourself. You’ll never have another crack at a hundred grand.”

 
          
“Neither
will
you, Betty. Neither will Alan Taggert.”

 
          
She
uttered a groan of surprise and shock. When she recovered her voice she said in
a hostile tone: “You’ve been kidding me. What do you know about Taggert?”

 
          
“What
he told me.”

 
          
“I
don’t believe you. He never told you a thing.”

 
          
She
corrected herself. “He doesn’t know anything to tell.”

 
          
“He
did.”

 
          
“Did
something happen to him?”

 
          
“Death
happened to him. He’s got a hole in the head like Eddie.”

 
          
She
started to say something, but the words were broken up by a rush of crying, a
high drawn-out whimper giving place to steady dry sobs. After a long time she
whispered: “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”

 
          
“You
didn’t ask me. Were you crazy about him?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said. “We were crazy about each other.”

 
          
“If
you were so crazy about him, why did you drag him into a thing like this?”

 
          
“I
didn’t drag him in. He wanted to do it. We were going to go away together.”

 
          
“And
live happily ever after.”

 
          
“Keep
your cheap cracks to yourself.”

 
          
“I
won’t buy love’s young dream from you, Betty. He was a boy, and you’re an old
woman, as experience goes. I think you sucked him in. You needed a finger man,
and he looked easy.”

 
          
“That’s
not the way it was.” Her voice was surprisingly gentle. “We’ve been together
for half a year. He came into the Piano with Sampson the week after I opened. I
fell, and it was the same with him. But neither of us had anything. We had to
have money to make a clean break.”

 
          
“And
Sampson was the obvious source. Kidnapping was the obvious method.”

 
          
“You
don’t have to waste your sympathy on Sampson. But we had other ideas at first.
Alan was going to marry the girl, Sampson’s daughter, and get Sampson to buy
him off. Sampson spoilt that himself. He lent Alan his bungalow at the
Valerio
one night. In the middle of the night we caught
Sampson behind the curtains in the bedroom peeping at us. After that Sampson
told the girl that if she married Alan he’d cut her off. He was going to fire
Alan too, only we knew too much about him.”

 
          
“Why
didn’t you blackmail him? That would be more your line.”

 
          
“We
thought of that, but he was too big for us to handle and he has the best
lawyers in the state. We knew plenty about him, but he would be hard to pin
down.
This Temple in the Clouds, for example.
How
could we prove that Sampson knew what Troy and Claude and Fay were using it
for?”

 
          
“If
you know so much about Sampson,” I said, “what makes him tick?”

 
          
“That’s
a hard one. I used to think maybe he had some faggot blood, but I don’t know.
He’s getting old, and I guess he felt washed up. He was looking for anything
that would make him feel like a man again: astrology or funny kinds of sex,
anything at all. The only thing he cares about is his daughter. I mink he
caught on that she was stuck on Alan, and never forgave Alan.”

 
          
“Taggert
should have stuck to her,” I said.

 
          
“You
think so?” Her voice cracked. It was humble and small when she spoke again. “I
didn’t do him any good. I know that, you don’t have to tell me. I couldn’t help
myself, and neither could he. How did he die, Archer?”

 
          
“He
got into a tight corner and tried to push out with a gun. Somebody else shot
first. A man called Graves.”

 
          
“I’d
like to meet that man. You said before that Alan talked. He didn’t do that?”

 
          
“Not
about you.”

 
          
“I’m
glad of that,” she said. “Where is he now?”

 
          
“In the morgue in Santa Teresa.”

 
          
“I
wish I could see him - once more.”

 
          
The
words came softly out of a dark dream. In the silence that followed, the dream
spread beyond her mind and cast a shadow as long as the shadows thrown by the
setting sun.

 
          
When
I slowed down for
Buenavista
, twilight was softening
the ugliness of the buildings and the lights were going on along the main
street. I noticed the neon greyhound at the bus station but didn’t stop. A few
miles beyond the town the highway converged with the shoreline again, winding
along the bluffs above the uninhabited beaches. The last gray shreds of
daylight clung to the surface of the sea and were slowly absorbed.

 
          
“This
is it,” Betty Fraley said. She had been so still I’d almost forgotten she was
in the seat beside me.

 
          
I
stopped on the asphalt shoulder of the highway, just short of a crossroads. On
the ocean side the road slanted down to the beach. A weather-faded sign at the
corner advertised a desirable beach development, but there were no houses in
sight. I could see the old beach club, though, a mass of buildings two hundred
yards below the highway, long and low and neutral-colored against the
glimmering whiteness of the surf.

 
          
“You
can’t drive down,” she said. “The road’s washed out at the bottom.”

 
          
“I
thought you hadn’t been down there.”

 
          
“Not
since last week. I looked it over with Eddie when he found it. Sampson’s in one
of the little rooms on the men’s side of the dressing-rooms.”

 
          
“He
better be.”

 
          
I
took the ignition key and left her in the car. As I went down, the road
narrowed to a humped clay pathway with deeply eroded ditches on both sides. The
wooden platform in front of the first building was warped, and I could feel the
clumps of grass growing up through the cracks under my feet. The windows were
high under the eaves, and dark.

 
          
I
turned my flashlight on the twin doors in the middle, and saw the
stencilled
signs: “Gentlemen” on one, “Ladies” on the
other. The one on the right, for “Gentlemen,” was hanging partly open. I pulled
it wide, but not very hopefully. The place seemed empty and dead. Except for
the restless water, there was no sign of life in it or around it.

 
          
No
sign of
Sampson,
and no sign of Graves. I looked at my
watch, which said a quarter to seven. It was well over an hour since I’d called
Graves. He’d had plenty of time to drive the forty-five miles from Cabrillo
Canyon. I wondered what had happened to him and the sheriff.

 
          
I
shot my flashlight beam across the floor, which was covered with blown sand and
the detritus of years. Opposite me was a row of closed doors in a plywood
partition. I took a step toward the row of doors. The movement behind me was so
lizard-quick I had no time to turn. “Ambush” was the last word that flashed
across my consciousness before it faded out.

 
          
“Sucker”
was the first word when consciousness returned. The
cyclops
eye of an electric lantern stared down at me like the ghastly eye of
conscience. My impulse was to get up and fight. The deep voice of Albert Graves
inhibited the impulse: “What happened to you?”

 
          
“Turn
the lantern away.” Its light went through my eye sockets like swords and out at
the back of my skull.

 
          
He
set the lantern down and kneeled beside me.
“Can you get up,
Lew?”

 
          
“I
can get up.” But I stayed where I was on the floor. “You’re late.”

 
          
“I
had some trouble finding the place in the dark.”

 
          
“Where’s
the sheriff? Couldn’t you find him either?”

 
          
“He
was out on a case, committing a paranoiac to the county hospital. I left word
for him to follow me down and bring a doctor. I didn’t want to waste time.”

 
          
“It
looks to me as if you’ve wasted a lot of time.”

 
          
“I
thought I knew the place, but I must have missed it. I drove on nearly to
Buenavista
before I realized it. Then when I came back I
couldn’t find it.”

 
          
“Didn’t
you see my car?”

 
          
“Where?”

 
          
I
sat up. A swaying sickness moved back and forth like a pendulum in my head.
“At the corner just above here.”

 
          
“That’s
where I parked. I didn’t see your car.”

 
          
I
felt for my car keys. They were in my pocket. “You’re sure? They didn’t take my
car keys.”

 
          
“Your
car isn’t there, Lew. Who are they?”

 
          
“Betty
Fraley and whoever sapped me. There must have been a fourth member of the gang
guarding Sampson.” I told him how I had come there.

 
          
“It
wasn’t smart to leave her in the car,” he said.

 
          
“Three
sappings
in two days are making Jack a dull boy.”

 
          
I
got to my feet and found that my legs were weak. He offered his shoulder for me
to lean on. I leaned against the wall.

 
          
He
raised the lantern. “Let me look at your head.” The broad planes of his face in
the moving light were furrowed by anxiety. He looked heavy and old. “Later,” I
said.

 
          
I
picked up my flashlight and crossed to the row of doors. Sampson was waiting
behind the second
one,
a fat old man slumped on a
bench against the rear wall of the cubicle. His head was wedged upright in the
corner. His open eyes were suffused with blood.

 
          
Graves
crowded in behind me and said: “God!” I handed him the flashlight and bent over
Sampson. His hands and ankles were bound together with quarter-inch rope, one
end of which was strung through a staple in the wall. The other end of the rope
was sunk in Sampson’s neck and tied under his left ear in a hard knot. I
reached behind the body for one of the bound wrists. It wasn’t cold, but the
pulse was gone. The pupils of the red eyeballs were asymmetric. There was
something pathetic about the bright plaid socks, yellow and red and green, on
the thick dead ankles.

 
          
Graves’s
breath came out. “Is he dead?”

 
          
“Yes.”
I felt a terrific letdown, which was followed by inertia. “He must have been
alive when I got here. How long was I out?”

 
          
“It’s
a quarter after seven now.”

 
          
“I
got here about a quarter to. They’ve had a half-hour’s start. We’ve got to
move.”

 
          
“And
leave Sampson here?”

 
          
“Yes.
The police will want him this way.”

 
          
We
left him in the dark. I drew on my last reserve to get up the hill. My car was
gone. Graves’s Studebaker was parked at the other side of the intersection.

 
          
“Which
way?” he said, as he climbed behind the wheel.

 
          
“
Buenavista
.
Well go to the
highway patrol.”

 
          
I
looked in my wallet, expecting the locker key to be gone. But it was there,
tucked in the card compartment. Whoever sapped me hadn’t had a chance to
compare notes with Betty Fraley. Or they decided to make their getaway and let
the money go. Somehow that didn’t seem likely.

 
          
I
said to Graves, as we passed the town limits: “Drop me at the bus station.”

 
          
“Why?”

 
          
I
told him why, and added: “If the money’s there, they may be back for it. If it
isn’t, it probably means they came this way and broke open the locker. You go
to the highway patrol and pick me up later.”

 
          
He
let me out at the red curb in front of the bus station. I stood outside the
glass door and looked into the big square waiting-room. Three or four men in
overalls were slouched on the scarred benches reading newspapers. A few old
men, ancient-looking in the fluorescent lights, were leaning against the
poster-papered walls and talking among themselves. A Mexican family in one
corner, father and mother and several
children,
formed
a solid unit like a six-man football team. The ticket booth under the clock at
the back of the room was occupied by a pimply youth in a flowered Hawaiian
shirt. There was a doughnut counter to the left, a fat blond woman in uniform
behind it. The bank of green metal lockers was against the wall to the right.

 
          
None
of the people in the room showed the tension I was looking for. They were
waiting for ordinary things: supper, a bus, Saturday night, a pension check, or
a natural death in bed.

 
          
I
pushed the glass door open and crossed the butt-strewn floor to the lockers.
The number I wanted was stamped on the key: twenty-eight. As I pushed the key
into the lock I glanced around the room. The doughnut woman’s boiled blue eyes
were watching me incuriously. Nobody else seemed interested.

 
          
There
was a red canvas beach bag in the locker. When I pulled it out
I
could hear the rattling paper inside. I sat down on the
nearest empty bench and opened the bag. The brown paper package it contained
was torn open at one end. I felt the edges of the stiff new bills with my
fingers.

 
          
I
tucked the bag under my arm, went to the doughnut counter, and ordered coffee.

 
          
“Did
you know you got blood on your shirt?” the blond woman said.

 
          
“I
know it. I wear it that way.”

 
          
She
looked me over as if she doubted my ability to pay. I restrained the impulse I
had to give her a hundred-dollar bill, and slapped a dime on the counter. She
gave me coffee in a thick white cup.

 
          
I
watched the door as I drank it, holding the cup in my left hand, with my right
hand ready to take out my gun. The electric clock above the ticket booth took
little bites of time. A bus arrived and departed, shuffling the occupants of
the room. The clock chewed very slowly, masticating each minute sixty times. By
ten to eight it was too late to hope for them. They had by-passed the money or
gone the other way.

 
          
Graves
appeared in the doorway gesticulating violently. I set down my cup and followed
him out. His car was double-parked across the street.

 
          
“They
just wrecked your car,” he told me, on the sidewalk.
“About
fifteen miles north of here.”

 
          
“Did
they get away?”

 
          
“Apparently
one of them did. The Fraley woman’s dead.”

 
          
“What
happened to the other?”

 
          
“The
H. P.
don’t
know yet. All they had was the first radio
report.”

 
          
We
covered the fifteen miles in less than fifteen minutes. The place was marked by
a line of standing cars, a crowd of human figures like animated black cut-outs
in the headlights. Graves pulled up short of a policeman who was trying to wave
us on with a red-beamed flashlight.

 
          
Jumping
out of the Studebaker, I could see beyond the line of cars to the edge of the
swath of light. My car was there, its nose crumpled into the bank. I took off
at a run and elbowed my way through the crowd around the wreck.