Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (7 page)

 
          
The
back room of Swift’s was paneled in black oak that glowed dimly under the
polished brass chandeliers. It was lined on two sides with leather-cushioned
booths. The rest of the floor space was covered with tables. All of the booths
and most of the tables were crowded with highly dressed people eating or
waiting to be fed. Most of the women were tight-skinned, starved too thin for
their bones. Most of the men had the masculine Hollywood look, which was harder
to describe. An insistent self-consciousness in their loud words and wide
gestures, as if God had a million-dollar contract to keep an eye on them.

 
          
Fay
Estabrook was in a back booth, with a blue flannel elbow on the table opposite
her. The rest of her companion was hidden by the partition.

 
          
I
went to the bar against the third wall and ordered a beer.

 
          
“Bass ale, Black Horse,
Carta
Blanca, or
Guinness stout?
We don’t serve domestic beer after six o’clock.”

 
          
I
ordered Bass, gave the bartender a dollar and told him to keep the change.
There wasn’t any change. He went away.

 
          
I
leaned forward to look in the mirror behind the bar and caught a three-quarters
view of Fay
Estabrook’s
face. It was earnest and
intense. The mouth was moving rapidly. Just then the man stood up.

 
          
He
was the kind who was usually in the company of younger
women,
the neat and ageless kind who turned a dollar year after year at nobody knew
what. He was the aging chorus boy
Cramm
had
described. His blue jacket fitted him too well. A white silk scarf at his
throat set off his silver hair.

 
          
He
was shaking hands with a red-haired man who was standing by the booth. I
recognized the red-haired man when he turned and wandered back to his own table
in the center of the room. He was a contract writer for Metro named Russell
Hunt.

 
          
The
silver-haired man waved good-bye to Fay Estabrook and set his course for the
door. I watched him in the mirror. He walked efficiently and neatly, looking
straight ahead as if the place was deserted. As far as he was concerned it was
deserted. Nobody lifted a hand or raised a lip over teeth. When he went out a
few heads turned, a couple of eyebrows were elevated. Fay Estabrook was left in
her booth by herself as if she had caught his infection and could communicate
it.

 
          
I
carried my glass to Russell Hunt’s table. He was sitting with a fat man who had
a round ugly nose turned up at the tip and bright little agent’s eyes.

 
          
“How’s
the word business, Russell?”

 
          
“Hello,
Lew.”

 
          
He
wasn’t glad to see me. I earned three hundred a week when I was
working,
and that made me one of the peasantry. He made
fifteen hundred. An ex-reporter from Chicago who had sold his first novel to
Metro and never written another, Hunt was turning from a hopeful kid to a nasty
old man with the migraine and a swimming pool he couldn’t use because he was
afraid of the water. I had helped him lose his second wife to make way for his
third, who was no improvement.

 
          
“Sit
down, sit down,” he said, when I didn’t go away. “Have a drink. It dissipates
the megrims. I do not drink to dissipate myself. I dissipate the megrims.”

 
          
“Hold
it,” said agent eyes. “If you’re a creative artist you may sit down. Otherwise
I can hardly be expected to waste my time with you.”

 
          
“Timothy
is my agent,” Russell said. “I am the goose that lays his golden eggs. Observe
his nervous fingers toying with the steak knife, his eyes fastened wistfully
upon my rounded throat. Boding me no good, I
ween
.”

 
          
“He
weens
,” said Timothy. “Do you create?”

 
          
I
slid into the patois and a chair. “I am a man of action.
A
sleuth hound, to wit.”

 
          
“Lew’s
a detective,” Russell said. “He unearths people’s guilty secrets and exposes
them to the eyes of a scandalized world.”

 
          
“Now,
how low can you get?” asked Timothy cheerfully.

 
          
I
didn’t like the crack, but I’d come for information, not exercise. He saw the
look on my face and turned to the waiter who was standing by his chair.

 
          
“Who
was that you were shaking hands with?” I asked Russell.

 
          
“The elegant lad in the scarf?
Fay said his name was Troy.
They were married at one time, so she ought to know.”

 
          
“What
does he do?”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t know for sure. I’ve seen him around: Palm Springs, Las Vegas,
Tia
Juana.”

 
          
“Las
Vegas?”

 
          
“I
think so. Fay says he’s an importer, but if he’s an importer I’m a monkey’s
uncle.” He remembered his role. “Curiously enough, I am a monkey’s uncle,
though I must confess that no one was more surprised than I when my younger
sister, the one with the three breasts, gave birth last Whitsuntide to the
cutest little chimpanzee you ever did see. She was Lady
Greystoke
by her first marriage, you know.”

 
          
His
patter ceased abruptly. His face became grim and miserable again. “Another
drink,” he said to the waiter.
“A double Scotch.
Make
it the same all round.”

 
          
“Just a minute, sir.”
The waiter was a wizened old man with
black thumbtack eyes. “I’m taking this gentleman’s order.”

 
          
“He
won’t serve me.” Russell flung out his arms in a burlesque gesture of despair.
“I’m eighty-six again.”

 
          
The
waiter pretended to be absorbed in what Timothy was saying.

 
          
“But
I don’t want French fried potatoes. I want au gratin potatoes.”

 
          
“We
don’t have au gratin, sir.”

 
          
“You
can make them, can’t you?” Timothy said, his
retroussed
nostrils flaring.

 
          
‘Thirty-five or forty minutes, sir.”

 
          
“O
God!” Timothy said. “What kind of a beanery is this? Let’s go to
Chasen’s
, Russell. I got to have au gratin potatoes.”

 
          
The
waiter stood watching him as if from a great distance. I glanced around him and
saw that Fay Estabrook was still at her table, working on a bottle of wine.

 
          
“They
don’t let me into
Chasen’s
anymore,” Russell said.
“On account of I am an agent of the
Cominform
. I
wrote a movie with a Nazi for a villain, so I am an agent of the
Cominform
. That’s where my money comes from, friends. It’s
tainted Moscow gold.”

 
          
“Cut
it out,” I said. “Do you know Fay Estabrook?”

 
          
“A little.
I passed her on the way up a few years ago. A few
more years, and I’ll pass her on the way down.”

 
          
“Introduce
me to her.”

 
          
“Why?”

 
          
“I’ve
always wanted to meet her.”

 
          
“I
don’t get it, Lew. She’s old enough to be your wife.”

 
          
I
said in language he could understand: “I have a sentimental regard for her,
stemming from the dear dead days beyond recall.”

 
          
“Introduce
him if he wants,” said Timothy. “Sleuth hounds make me nervous. Then I can eat
my au gratin potatoes in peace.”

 
          
Russell
got up laboriously, as if the top of his red head supported the ceiling.

 
          
“Good
night,” I said to Timothy. “Have fun with the hired help before they throw you
out on your fat neck.”

 
          
I
picked up my drink and steered Russell across the room. “Don’t tell her my
business,” I said in his ear.

 
          
“Who
am I to wash your dirty linen in public? In private it’s another matter. I’d
love to wash your dirty linen in private. It’s a fetish with me.”

 
          
“I
throw it away when it’s dirty.”

 
          
“But what a waste.
Please save it for me in future. Just
send it to me care of Krafft-Ebing at the clinic.”

 
          
Mrs.
Estabrook looked up at us with eyes like dark searchlights.

 
          
“This
is Lew Archer, Fay.
The agent.
Of the Communist
International, that is. He’s an old admirer of yours in his secret heart.”

 
          
“How
nice!” she said, in a voice that was wasted on mother roles. “Won’t you sit down?”

 
          
“Thank
you.” I sat down in the leather seat opposite her.

 
          
“Excuse
me,” Russell said. “I have to look after Timothy. He’s waging a class war with
the waiter. Tomorrow night it’s his turn to look after me.
Oh
goody!”
He went away, lost in his private maze of words.

 
          
“It’s
nice to be remembered occasionally,” the woman said. “Most of my friends are
gone, and all of them are forgotten.
Helene and Florence and
Mae - all of them gone and forgotten.”

 
          
Her
winy sentimentality, half phony and half real, was a pleasant change in a way
from Russell’s desperate double-talk. I took my cue.

 
          
“Sic
transit
gloria
mundi. Helene Chadwick was a great
player in her day. But you’re still carrying on.”

 
          
“I
try to keep my hand in, Archer. The life has gone out of the town, though. We
used to care about picture-making - really care. I made three grand a week at
my peak, but it wasn’t the money we worked for.”

 
          
“The
play’s the thing.” It was less embarrassing to quote.

 
          
“The
play was the thing. It isn’t like that anymore. The town has lost its
sincerity. No life left in it. No life left in either it or me.”

 
          
She
poured the final ounce from her half bottle of sherry and drank it down in one
long mournful swallow. I nursed my drink.

 
          
“You’re
doing all right.’

 
          
“I
let my glance slide down the heavy body half revealed by the open fur coat. It
was good for her age, tight-
waisted
, high-bosomed,
with amphora hips. And it was alive, with a subtly persistent female power, an
animal pride like a cat’s.

 
          
“I
like you, Archer. You’re sympathetic. Tell me, when were you born?”

 
          
“What
year, you mean?”

 
          
“The date.”

 
          
“The
second of June.”

 
          
“Really?
I didn’t expect you to be
Geminian
.
Geminis
have no heart. They’re double-
souled
like the Twins, and they lead a double life. Are you
coldhearted, Archer?”