Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (23 page)

 
          
He
smiled ironically, with his heavy jaw thrust out. “Doesn’t that fall under the
category of bluntness?”

 
          
“In
this case I think it’s necessary. If we don’t get to Betty fast there’ll be
somebody there ahead of us. Dwight Troy is gunning for her.”

 
          
He
gave me a curious look. “Where do you get your information, Lew?”

 
          
“I
got that the hard way. I talked to Troy himself last night.”

 
          
“He
is mixed up in this, then?”

 
          
“He
is now. I think he wants the hundred grand for himself, and I think he knows
who has it.”

 
          
“Betty
Fraley?” He took a notebook out of his pocket.

 
          
“That’s
my guess. Black hair, green eyes, regular features, five foot two or three,
between twenty-five and thirty, probable cocaine addict, thin but well stacked,
and pretty if you like to play with reptiles.
Wanted on
suspicion of the murder of Eddie Lassiter.”

 
          
He
glanced up sharply from his writing. “Is that another guess, Lew?”

 
          
“Call
it that. Will you put it on the wires?”

 
          
“Right away.”
He started across the room to the butler’s
pantry.

 
          
“Not
that phone, Bert. It’s connected with the one in
Taggert’s
cottage.”

 
          
He
stopped and turned to me with a shadow of grief on his face. “You seem pretty
sure that
Taggert’s
our man.”

 
          
“Would
it break your heart if he was?”

 
          
“Not
mine,” he said, and turned away. “I’ll use the phone in the study.”

 
          
I
waited in the hall at the front of the house until Felix came to tell me that
Taggert was eating breakfast in the kitchen. He led me around the back of the
garages, up a path that became a series of low stone steps climbing the side of
the hill. When we came within sight of the guest cottage, he left me.

 
          
It
was a one-story white frame house perched among trees with its back to the
hillside. I opened the unlocked door and went in. The living-room was paneled
in yellow pine and furnished with easy chairs, a radio-phonograph, a large
refectory table covered with magazines and piles of records. The view through
the big western window took in the whole estate and the sea to the horizon.

 
          
The
magazines on the table were Jazz Record and Downbeat. I went through the
records and albums one by one, Decca and Bluebird and Asch, twelve-inch
Commodores and Blue Notes. There were many names I had heard of: Fats Waller,
Red Nichols,
Lux
Lewis, Mary Lou Williams - and
titles I never had heard of: Numb
Fumblin
’ and
Viper’s Drag, Night Life,
Denapas
Parade.
But no Betty Fraley.

 
          
I
was at the door on my way to talk to Felix when I remembered the black disks
skipping out to sea the day before. A few minutes after I saw them, Taggert had
come through the house in bathing trunks.

 
          
Avoiding
the house, I headed for the shore. From the glassed-in pergola on the edge of
the bluff a long flight of concrete steps descended the cliff diagonally to the
beach. There was a bathhouse with a screened veranda at the foot of the steps,
and I went in. I found a rubber-and-plate-glass diving mask hanging on a nail
in one of the bathhouse cubicles. I stripped to my shorts and adjusted the mask
to my head.

 
          
A
fresh offshore breeze was driving in the waves and blowing off their crests in
spray before they broke. The morning sun was hot on my back, the dry
sand
warm against the soles of my feet. I stood for a
minute in the zone of wet brown sand just above the reach of the waves and
looked at them. The waves were blue and sparkling, curved as gracefully as
women, but I was afraid of them. The sea was cold and dangerous. It held dead
men.

 
          
I
waded in slowly, pulled the mask down over my face, and pushed off. About fifty
yards from shore, beyond the surf, I turned on my back and breathed deeply
through my mouth. The rise and fall of the swells, and the extra oxygen, made
me a little dizzy. Through the misted glass the blue sky seemed to be spinning
over my head. I ducked under water to clear the glass, surface-dived, and breast-stroked
to the bottom.

 
          
It
was pure white sand broken by long brown ribs of stone. The sand was roiled a
little by the movement of the water, but not enough to spoil the visibility. I
zigzagged forty or fifty feet along the bottom and found nothing but a couple
of undersized abalones clinging to a rock. I kicked off and went to the surface
for air.

 
          
When
I raised the mask I saw that a man was watching me from the cliff. He ducked
down behind the wild-cherry windbreak by the pergola, but not before I had recognized
Taggert. I took several deep breaths and dived again. When I came up, Taggert
had disappeared.

 
          
On
the third dive I found what I was looking for, an unbroken black disk half
buried in the sand on the bottom. Holding the record against my chest, I turned
on my back and kicked myself to shore. I took it into the shower and washed and
dried it with tender care, like a mother with an infant.

 
          
Taggert
was on the veranda when I came out of the dressing-rooms. He was sitting in a
canvas chair with his back to the screen door. In flannel slacks and a white
T-shirt, he looked very young and brown. The black hair on his small head was
carefully brushed.

 
          
He
gave me a boyish grin that didn’t touch his eyes. “Hello there, Archer. Have a
nice swim?”

 
          
“Not
bad. The water’s a little cold.”

 
          
“You
should have used the pool. It’s always warmer.”

 
          
“I
prefer the ocean. You never know what you’re going to find. I found this.”

 
          
He
looked at the record in my hands as if he was noticing it for the first time.
“What is it?”

 
          
“A record.
Somebody seems to have scraped the labels off and
thrown it in the sea. I wonder why.”

 
          
He
took a step toward me, long and noiseless on the grass rug. “Let me see.”

 
          
“Don’t
touch it. You might break it.”

 
          
“I
won’t break it.”

 
          
He
reached for it. I jerked it out of his reach. His hand grasped air.

 
          
“Stand
back,” I said.

 
          
“Give
it to me, Archer.”

 
          
“I
don’t think so.”

 
          
“I’ll
take it away from you.”

 
          
“Don’t
do that,” I said. “I think I can break you in two.”

 
          
He
stood and looked at me for ten long seconds. Then he turned on the grin again.
The boyish charm was very slow in coming. “I was just kidding, man. But I’d
still like to know what’s on the bloody thing.”

 
          
“So
would I.”

 
          
“Let’s
play it then. There’s a portable player here.” He moved around me to the table
in the center of the veranda and opened a square fiber box.

 
          
“I’ll
play it,” I said.

 
          
“That’s
right - you’re afraid I’ll break it.” He went back to his chair and sat down,
stretching his legs in front of him.

 
          
I
cranked the machine and placed the record on the turntable. Taggert was smiling
expectantly. I stood and watched him, waiting for a sign, a wrong move. The
handsome boy didn’t fit into the system of fears I had. He didn’t fit into any
pattern I knew.

 
          
The
record was scratched and tired. A single piano began to beat, half drowned in
surface noise. Three or four hackneyed boogie chords were laid down and
repeated. Then the right hand wove through them, twisting them alive. The first
chords multiplied and built themselves around the room. The place they made was
half jungle, half machine. The right hand moved across it and back again like
something being chased.
Chased through an artificial jungle
by the shadow of a giant.

 
          
“You
like it?” Taggert said.

 
          
“Within limits.
If the piano was a percussion instrument it
would be first-rate.”

 
          
“But
that’s just the point. It is a percussion instrument if you want to use it that
way.”

 
          
The
record ended, and I turned it off. “You seem to be interested in boogie-woogie.
You wouldn’t know who made this record?”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t, no. The style could be
Lux
Lewis.”

 
          
“I
doubt it. It sounds more like a woman’s playing.”

 
          
He
frowned in elaborate concentration. His eyes were small in his head. “I don’t
know of any woman who can play like that.”

 
          
“I
know of one. I heard her in the Wild Piano night before last. Betty Fraley.”

 
          
“I
never heard of her,” he said.

 
          
“Come
off it, Taggert. This is one of her records.”

 
          
“Is
it?”

 
          
“You
should know. You tossed it in the sea. Now why would you do that?”

 
          
“The
question doesn’t arise, because I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t dream of throwing
good records away.”

 
          
“I
think you dream a great deal, Taggert. I think you’ve been dreaming about a
hundred thousand dollars.”

 
          
He
shifted slightly in his chair. His stretched-out pose had stiffened and lost
its air of casualness. If someone had lifted him by the nape of the neck, his
legs would have stayed as they were, straight out before him in the air.

 
          
“Are
you suggesting that I kidnapped Sampson?”

 
          
“Not
personally. I’m suggesting that you conspired to do it - with Betty Fraley and
her brother Eddie Lassiter.”

 
          
“I
never heard of them, either of them.” He drew a deep breath.

 
          
“You
will. You’ll meet one of them in court, and hear about the other.”

 
          
“Now
just a minute,” he said. “You’re going too fast for me. Is this because I threw
those records away?”

 
          
“This
is your record, then?”

 
          
“Sure.”
His voice was vibrantly frank. “I admit I had some of Betty Fraley’s records. I
got rid of them last night when I heard you talking to the police about the
Wild Piano.”

 
          
“You
also listen to other people’s telephone conversations?”

 
          
“It
was purely accidental. I overheard you when I was trying to make a phone call
of my own.”

 
          
“To Betty Fraley?”

 
          
“I
told you I don’t know her.”

 
          
“Excuse
me,” I said. “I thought perhaps you phoned her last night to give her the green
light on the murder.”

 
          
“The murder?”

 
          
“The murder of Eddie Lassiter.
You don’t have to act so
surprised, Taggert.”

 
          
“But
I don’t know anything about these people.”

 
          
“You
knew enough to throw away Betty’s records.”

 
          
“I’d
heard of her, that’s all. I knew she played at the Wild Piano. When I heard the
police were interested in the place, I got rid of her records. You know how
unreasonable they can be about circumstantial evidence.”

 
          
“Don’t
try to kid me the way you’ve kidded yourself,” I said. “An innocent man would
never have thought of throwing those records away. People all over the country
have them, haven’t they?”

 
          
‘That’s
just my point. There’s nothing incriminating about them.”

 
          
“But
you thought there was, Taggert. You’d have had no reason to think of them as
evidence against you, if you really weren’t in this thing with Betty Fraley.
And it happens that you threw them in the sea a good many hours before you
heard my phone call - before Betty was ever mentioned in connection with this
case.”

 
          
“Maybe
I did,” he said. “But you’re going to have a time hanging anything on me on the
basis of those records.”

 
          
“I’m
not going to try to. They put me on to you and served their purpose. So let’s
forget about the records and talk about something important.” I sat down in a
wicker chair across the veranda from him.