Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (10 page)

 
          
“Where
is he?”

 
          
“I
don’t know. Who is this talking? Mr. Troy?”

 
          
“Yes.
I’ll attend to Fay.” I hung up.

 
          
The
knob of the front door rattled slightly behind me. I froze with my hand on the
telephone and watched the cut-glass knob as it slowly rotated, sparking in the
light from the living-room. The door swung open suddenly, and a man in a light
topcoat stood in the opening. His silver head was hatless. He stepped inside
like an actor coming on stage, shutting the door neatly with his left hand. His
right hand was in the pocket of the topcoat. The pocket was pointed at me.

 
          
I
faced him. “Who are you?”

 
          
“I
know it isn’t polite to answer one question with another.” His voice was
softened by a trace of south-of-England accent a long way from home. “But who
are you?”

 
          
“If
this is a stickup…”

 
          
The
weight in his pocket nodded at me dumbly. He became more peremptory. “I asked
you a simple question, old chap. Give me a simple answer.”

 
          
“The
name is Archer,” I said. “Do you use bluing when you wash your hair? I had an
aunt who said it was very effective.”

 
          
His
face didn’t change. He showed his anger by speaking more precisely. “I dislike
superfluous violence. Please don’t make it necessary.”

 
          
I
could look down on the top of his
head,
see the scalp
shining through the carefully parted hair. “You terrify me,” I said. “An
Italianate Englishman is a devil incarnate.”

 
          
But
the gun in his pocket was a small, intense refrigerating unit cooling off the
hallway. His eyes had already turned to ice.

 
          
“And
what do you do for a living, Mr. Archer?”

 
          
“I
sell insurance. My hobby is
stooging
for gunmen.” I
reached for my wallet to show him my “insurance of all descriptions” card.

 
          
“No,
keep your hands where I can see them. And guard your tongue, won’t you?”

 
          
“Gladly.
Don’t expect me to sell you insurance. You’re not a
good risk, toting a gun in L. A.”

 
          
The
words went over his head and left it unruffled. “What are you doing here, Mr.
Archer?”

 
          
“I
brought Fay home.”

 
          
“Are
you a friend of hers?”

 
          
“Apparently.
Are you?”

 
          
“I’ll
ask the questions. What do you plan to do next?”

 
          
“I
was just going to call a taxi and go home.”

 
          
“Perhaps
you had better do that now,” he said.

 
          
I
picked up the receiver and called a Yellow Cab. He moved toward me lightly. His
left hand palpated my chest and armpits, moved down my flanks and hips. I was
glad I’d left my gun in the car, but I hated to be touched by him. His hands
were epicene.

 
          
He
stepped back and showed me his gun, a nickel-plated revolver, .32 or.38
caliber. I was calculating my chances of kicking him off balance and taking it.

 
          
His
body stiffened slightly, and the gun came into focus like an eye. “No,” he
said. “I’m a quick shot, Mr. Archer. You’d stand no chance at all. Now turn
around.”

 
          
I
turned. He jammed the gun into my back above the kidneys.
“Into
the bedroom.”

 
          
He
marched me into the lighted bedroom and turned me to face the door. I heard his
quick feet
cross
the room, a drawer open and shut.
The gun came back to my kidneys.

 
          
“What
were you doing in here?”

 
          
“I
wasn’t in here. Fay turned on the light.”

 
          
“Where
is she now?”

 
          
“In the front room.”

 
          
He
walked me into the room where Mrs. Estabrook was lying, bidden by the back of
the chesterfield. She had sunk into a
stuporous
sleep
that resembled death. Her mouth was open, but she was no longer snoring. One of
her arms hung down to the floor like an overfed white snake.

 
          
He
looked at her with contempt, the contempt that silver might feel for sodden
flesh.

 
          
“She
never could hold her liquor.”

 
          
“We
were pub-crawling,” I said. “We had a wizard do.”

 
          
He
looked at me sharply.
“Evidently.
Now why should you
be interested in a bag of worms like this?”

 
          
“You’re
talking about the woman I love.”

 
          
“My wife.”
A slight twitch of his nostrils proved that his
face could move.

 
          
“Really?”

 
          
“I’m
not a jealous man, Mr. Archer, but I must warn you to keep away from her. She
has her own small circle of associates, and you simply wouldn’t fit in. Fay’s
very tolerant, of course. I am less tolerant. Some of her associates aren’t
tolerant in the least.”

 
          
“Are
they all as wordy as you?”

 
          
He
showed his small, regular teeth and subtly changed his posture. His torso
leaned, and his head leaned sideways with it, glinting in the light. He was an
obscene shape, a vicious boy alert and eager behind an old man’s mask. The gun
twirled on his finger like a silver wheel and came to rest pointed at my heart.
“They have other ways of expressing themselves. Do I make myself clear?”

 
          
“The
idea is a simple one to grasp.” The sweat was cold on my back.

 
          
A
car honked in the street. He went to the door and held it open for me. It was
warmer outside.

 
          
“I’m
glad I called in,” the driver said.
“Saves me a dry run.
I had a long haul out to Malibu. Four pigs called out to a beach party. They’ll
never get near the water.” The back of the cab still had a hothouse odor. “You
should
of
heard those women talk.” He slowed for the
stop sign at Sunset. “Going back to town?”

 
          
“Wait
a minute.” He stopped. “Do you know of a place called the Piano?”

 
          
“The
Wild Piano?” he said.
“In West Hollywood.
Sort of a bottle joint.”

 
          
“Who
runs it?”

 
          
“They
never showed me their books,” he said airily, shifting into gear. “You want to
go there?”

 
          
“Why not?”
I said. ‘The night is young.”

 
          
I
was lying. The night was old and chilly, with a slow heartbeat. The tires
whined like starved cats on the fog-sprinkled black-top. The
neons
along the Strip glared with insomnia.

 
          
The
night was no longer young at the Wild Piano, but her heartbeat was artificially
stimulated. It was on a badly lit
sidestreet
among a
row of old duplexes shouldering each other across garbage-littered alleys. It
had no sign, no plastic-and-plate-glass front. An arch of weather-browned
stucco, peeling away like scabs, curved over the entrance. Above it a narrow
balcony with a wrought iron railing masked heavily curtained windows.

 
          
A
Negro doorman in uniform came out from under the arch and opened the door of
the cab. I paid off the driver and followed him in. In the dim light from over
the door I could see that the nap of his blue coat was worn down to the bare
fiber. The brown leather door had been stained black around the handle by the
pressure of many sweating hands. It opened into a deep, narrow room like a
tunnel.

 
          
Another
Negro in a waiter’s jacket, a napkin over his arm, came to the door to meet me.
His smile-stretched lips were indigo in the blue light that emanated from the
walls. The walls were decorated with monochromatic blue nudes in various
postures. There were white-clothed tables along them on either side, with an
aisle between. A woman was playing a piano on a low platform at the far end of
the room. She looked unreal through the smoke, a mechanical doll with clever
hands and a rigid immovable back.

 
          
I
handed my hat to a hat-check girl in a cubbyhole and asked for a table near the
piano. The waiter skidded ahead of me down the aisle, his napkin fluttering
like a pennon, trying to create the illusion that business was brisk. It
wasn’t. Two thirds of the tables were empty. The rest were occupied by couples.
The men were a representative off-scouring of the better bars, putting off
going home. Fat and thin, they were fish-faced in the blue aquarium light,
fish-faced and oyster-eyed.

 
          
Most
of their companions looked paid or willing to be paid. Two or three were
blondes I had seen in chorus lines, with
ingenue
smiles fixed on their faces as if they could arrest the passage of time.
Several were older women whose pneumatic bodies would keep them afloat for
another year or two. These women were working hard with hands, with tongues,
with eyes. If they slipped from the level of the Wild Piano, there were worse
places to fall to.

 
          
A
Mexican girl with a bored yellow face was sitting by herself at the table next
to mine. Her eyes reached for me, turned away again.

 
          
“Scotch
or bourbon, sir?” the waiter said.

 
          
“Bourbon and water.
I’ll mix it.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.
We have sandwiches.”

 
          
I
remembered that I was hungry.
“Cheese.”

 
          
“Very good, sir.”

 
          
I
looked at the piano, wondering if I was being too literal. The woman who called
herself Betty had said she was at the piano. Its hoarse voice threaded the
irregular laughter from the tables in melancholy counterpoint. The pianist’s
fingers moved in the keyboard mirror with a hurried fatality, as if the piano
played itself and she had to keep up with it. Her tense bare shoulders were
thin and shapely. Her hair poured down on them like tar and made them seem
stark white. Her face was hidden.

 
          
“Hello,
handsome. Buy me a drink.”

 
          
The
Mexican girl was standing by my chair. When I looked up she sat down. Her
round-shouldered hipless body moved like a whip. Her low-cut gown was
incongruous - clothes on a savage. She tried to smile, but her wooden face had
never learned that art.

 
          
“I
should buy you a pair of glasses.”

 
          
She
knew it was meant to be funny and that was all. “You are a funny boy. I like a
funny boy.” Her voice was guttural and
forced,
the
voice you would expect from a wooden face.

 
          
“You
wouldn’t like me. But I’ll buy you a drink.”

 
          
She
moved her eyes in order to express pleasure. They were solid and unchanging
like lumps of resin. Her hands moved onto my arm and began to stroke it. “I
like you, funny boy. Say something funny.”

 
          
She
didn’t like me, and I didn’t like her. She leaned forward to let me look down
her dress. The breasts were little and tight, with pencil-sharp nipples. Her
arms and upper lip were furred with black.

 
          
“On
second thought I’ll buy you hormones,” I said.

 
          
“Is
it something to eat? I am very hungry.” She showed me her hungry white teeth by
way of illustration.

 
          
“Why
don’t you take a bite of me?”

 
          
“You
are kidding me,” she said sulkily. But her hands continued working on my arm.

 
          
The
waiter appeared and gave me a chance to break loose. He transferred from his
tray to the table a small sandwich on a plate, a glass of water, a teacup with
a half inch of whisky at the bottom, an empty teapot, and a glass of something
he had telepathically brought along for the girl.

 
          
“That
will be six dollars, sir.”

 
          
“I
beg your pardon.”

 
          
“Two dollars per drink, sir.
Two dollars
for the sandwich.”

 
          
I
lifted the upper layer of the sandwich and looked at the slice of cheese it
contained. It was as thin as gold leaf and almost as expensive. I put down a
ten-dollar bill and left the change on the table. My primitive companion drank
her fruit juice, glanced at the four ones, and went back to work on my arm.

 
          
“You
have very passionate hands,” I said; “only I happen to be waiting for Betty.”

 
          
“Betty?”
She flung a disdainful black glance at the pianist’s back. “But Betty is
arteest
. She will not -.” A gesture finished the sentence.

 
          
“Betty
is the one for me.”

 
          
Her
lips came together with a red tip of tongue protruding as if she was going to
spit. I signaled a waiter and ordered a drink for the woman at the piano. When
I turned back to the Mexican girl, she was gone.

 
          
The
waiter pointed me out when he set down the drink on the piano, and the pianist
turned to look. Her face was oval, so small and delicately modeled it looked
pinched. Her eyes were indeterminate in color and meaning. She made no effort
to smile. I raised my chin by way of invitation. Her head jerked negatively and
bent over the keyboard again.

 
          
I
watched her white hands picking their way through the artificial boogie-woogie
jungle. The music followed them like giant footsteps rustling in metallic
undergrowth. You could see the shadow of the giant and hear his trip-hammer
heartbeat. She was hot.

 
          
Then
she changed her tune. Her left hand still drummed and rolled in the bass, while
her right hand elaborated a blues. She began to sing in a hard, sibilant voice,
frayed at the edges but somehow moving:

 
          
Brain’s
in my stomach,

 
          
Hearts
in my mouth,

 
          
Want
to go north -

 
          
My
feet point south.

 
          
I
got the psychosomatic blues.

 
          
Doctor,
doctor, doctor,

 
          
Analyze
my brain.

 
          
Organize
me, doctor.

 
          
Doctor,
ease my pain -

 
          
I
got the psychosomatic blues.

 
          
She
phrased her song with decadent intelligence. I didn’t like it, but it deserved
a better audience than the chattering room behind me. I clapped when it ended
and ordered her another drink.

 
          
She
brought it to my table and sat down. She had a Tanagra figurine body, small and
perfect, poised tunelessly somewhere between twenty and thirty. “You like my
music,” she stated. She inclined her forehead and looked up at me from under
it, the mannerism of a woman proud of her eyes. Their brown-flecked irises were
centerless
and disturbing.

 
          
“You
should be on
Fifty-second
Street.”

 
          
“Don’t
think I wasn’t. But you haven’t been there for a while, have you? The street
has gone to the dogs.”

 
          
“There’s
no percentage in this place. It’s going to fold. Anybody can see the signs. Who
runs it?”

 
          
“A
man I know. Got a cigarette?”

 
          
When
I lit it for her, she inhaled deeply. Her face unconsciously waited for the
lift and drooped a little when it didn’t come. She was a baby with an ageless
face, sucking a dry bottle. The rims of her nostrils were bloodless, as white
as snow, and that was no Freudian error.

 
          
“My
name is Lew,” I said. “I must have heard of you.”

 
          
“I’m
Betty Fraley.” The statement had a margin of regret like a thin black border on
a card. The name didn’t mean anything to me, but it did to her.

 
          
“I
remember you.” I lied more boldly. “You got a tough break, Betty.” All
snowbirds wore stigmata of bad luck.

 
          
“You
can say it twice. Two years in a white cell, and no piano. The conspiracy rap
was a hummer. All they could prove was I needed it myself. They took me for my
own good, they said. Their own good! They wanted publicity, and my name was
known. It isn’t any more, and if I ever kick the habit, it won’t be with the
help of the feds.” Her red mouth twisted over the wet red end of the cigarette.
‘Two years without a piano.”

 
          
“You
do nicely for a girl that’s out of practice.”

 
          
“You
think so? You should have heard me in Chicago when I was at my peak. I draped
the piano over the beams in the ceiling and swung from the keys. You heard my
records, maybe.”

 
          
“Who
hasn’t?”