Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (27 page)

 
          
“Slow and careful, Fay.
No leaning on the horn. You wouldn’t
be any good without a spinal column, and
Geminis
have
no heart.”

 
          
I
touched the back of her neck with the muzzle of my gun. She winced, and the car
leaped forward. I rested my weight on Luis and lowered the rear window on the
right side. The lane opened out in a small level clearing in front of the
cottage.

 
          
“Turn
left,” I said, “and stop in front of the door. Then set the emergency.”

 
          
The
door of the cottage began to open inward. I ducked my head. When I raised it
again, Troy was in the doorway, with his right hand, knuckles out, resting on
the edge of the frame. I sighted and fired. At twenty feet I could see the mark
the bullet made, like a fat red insect alighting, between the first and second
knuckles of his right hand.

 
          
Before
his left hand could move across his body for his gun he was immobile for an
instant. Long enough for me to reach him and use the gun butt again. He sat
down on the doorstep, with his silver head hanging between his knees.

 
          
The
motor of the Buick roared behind me. I went after Fay, caught the car before
she could turn it, and pulled her out by the shoulders. She tried to spit at me
and slobbered on her chin.

 
          
“Well
go inside,” I said.
“You first.”

 
          
She
walked almost drunkenly, stumbling on her heels. Troy had rolled out of the
doorway and was curled on the shallow porch, perfectly still. We stepped over
him.

 
          
The
odor of burned flesh was still in the room. Betty Fraley was on the floor with
Marcie at her throat, worrying her like a terrier. I pulled Marcie off. She
hissed at me and drummed her heels on the floor, but she didn’t try to get up.
I motioned to Fay with the gun to stand in the corner beside her.

 
          
Betty
Fraley sat up, the breath whistling in her throat. Across one side of her face,
from hairline to jawbone, four parallel scratches dripped blood. The other side
of her face was yellowish white.

 
          
“You’re
a pretty picture,” I said.

 
          
“Who
are you?” Her voice was a flat caw. Her eyes were fixed.

 
          
“It
doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of here before I have to kill these people.”

 
          
“That
would be pleasant work,” she said. She tried to stand up and fell forward on
hands and knees. “I can’t walk.”

 
          
I
lifted her. Her body was light and hard as a dry stick. Her head hung loosely
across my arm. I had the feeling that I was holding an evil child. Marcie and
Fay were watching me from the corner. It seemed to me then that evil was a
female quality, a poison that women secreted and transmitted to men like
disease.

 
          
I
carried Betty out to the car and sat her down in the front seat. I opened the
back door, laid Luis out on the ground. There were suds on his thick blue lips,
blown in and out by his shallow breathing.

 
          
“Thank
you,” her tiny caw said, as I climbed behind the wheel. “You saved my life, if
that’s worth anything.”

 
          
“It
isn’t worth much, but you’re going to pay me for it. The price is a hundred
thousand - and Ralph Sampson.”

 
          
I
parked the Buick in the road at the entrance to the bridge and kept the
ignition key. As I lifted Betty Fraley out of the seat her right arm slipped
around my shoulders. I could feel her small fingers on the nape of my neck.

 
          
“You’re
very strong,” she said. “You’re Archer, aren’t you?” She looked up at me with a
sly and feline innocence. She didn’t know about the blood on her face.

 
          
“It’s
time you remembered me. Take your hand off me, or I’ll drop you.”

 
          
She
lowered her eyelids. When I started to back my car she cried out suddenly:
“What about them?”

 
          
“We
don’t have room for them.”

 
          
“You’re
going to let them go?”

 
          
“What
do you want me to hold them for?
Mayhem?”
I found a
wide place in the road and turned the car toward Sunset Boulevard.

 
          
Her
fingers pinched my arm. “We’ve got to go back.”

 
          
“I
told you to keep your hands off me. I don’t like what you did to Eddie any more
than they do.”

 
          
“But
they’ve got something of mine!”

 
          
“No,”
I said. “I have it, and it isn’t yours anymore.”

 
          
“The key?”

 
          
“The key.”

 
          
She
slumped down in the seat as if her spine had melted. “You can’t let them go,”
she said sullenly.
“After what they did to me.
You let
Troy run loose, and
hell
get
you for today.”

 
          
“I
don’t think so,” I said. “Forget about them and start worrying about yourself.”

 
          
“I
haven’t got a future to worry about. Have I?”

 
          
“I
want to see Sampson first. Then I’ll decide.”

 
          
“I’ll
take you to him.”

 
          
“Where
is he?”

 
          
“Not very far from home.
He’s in a place on the beach about
forty miles from Santa Teresa.”

 
          
“This
is straight?”

 
          
“The straight stuff, Archer.
But you
wont
let me go. You
wont
take money, will you?”

 
          
“Not
from you.”

 
          
“Why
should you?” she said nastily. “You’ve got my hundred grand.”

 
          
“I’m
working for the
Sampsons
. They’ll get it back.”

 
          
“They
don’t need the money. Why don’t you get smart, Archer? There’s another person
in this with me. This other person had nothing to do with Eddie. Why don’t you
keep the money and split it with this other person?”

 
          
“Who
is he?”

 
          
“I
didn’t say it was a man.” Her voice had recovered from the pressure of Marcie’s
fingers, and she modulated it girlishly.

 
          
“You
couldn’t work with a woman. Who’s the man?” She didn’t know that Taggert was
dead, and it wasn’t the time to tell her.

 
          
“Forget
it I thought for a minute maybe I could trust you. I must be going soft in the
head.”

 
          
“Maybe
you are. You haven’t told me where Sampson is. The longer it takes you to tell
me, the less I’ll feel like doing anything for you.”

 
          
“He’s
in a place on the beach about ten miles north of
Buenavista
.
It used to be the dressing-room of a beach club that folded during the war.”

 
          
“And
he’s alive?”

 
          
“He
was yesterday. The first day he was sick from the chloroform, but he’s all
right now.”

 
          
“He
was yesterday, you mean. Is he tied up?”

 
          
“I
haven’t seen him. Eddie was the one.”

 
          
“I
suppose you left him there to starve to death.”

 
          
“I
couldn’t go there. He knew me by sight. Eddie was the one he didn’t know.”

 
          
“And
Eddie died by an act of God.”

 
          
“No,
I killed him.” She said it almost smugly. “You’ll never be able to prove it,
though. I wasn’t thinking of Sampson when I shot Eddie.”

 
          
“You
were thinking of money, weren’t you? A two-way cut instead of a three-way cut.”

 
          
“I
admit it was partly that, but only partly. Eddie pushed me around all the time
I was a kid. When I finally got on my feet and was heading places, he sang me
into the pen. I was using the stuff, but he was selling it. He helped the feds
to hang conspiracy on me, and got off with a light sentence himself. He didn’t
know I knew that, but I promised myself to get him. I got him when he thought
he was riding high. Maybe he wasn’t so surprised. He told Marcie where to find
me if anything went wrong.”

 
          
“It
always does,” I said, “Kidnappings don’t come off.
Especially
when the kidnappers start murdering each other.”

 
          
I
turned onto the boulevard and stopped at the first gas station I came to. She
watched me remove the ignition key.

 
          
“What
are you going to do?”

 
          
“Phone
help for Sampson. He may be dying, and it’s going to take us an hour and half
to get there. Has the place got a name?”

 
          
“It
used to be the Sunland Beach Club. It’s a long green building. You can see it
from the highway, out near the end of a little point.”

 
          
For
the first time I was sure she was telling the truth. I called Santa Teresa from
the station’s pay telephone while the attendant filled the tank of my car. I
could watch Betty Fraley through the window.

 
          
Felix
answered the phone. “This is the Sampson residence.”

 
          
“Archer speaking.
Is Mr. Graves there?”

 
          
“Yes, sir.
I will call him.”

 
          
Graves
came to the phone. “Where the hell are you?”

 
          
“Los
Angeles. Sampson is alive, or at least he was yesterday. He’s locked up in the
dressing-room of a beach club called the Sunland. Know it?”

 
          
“I
used to. It’s been out of business for years. I know where it is, north of
Buenavista
on the highway.”

 
          
“See
how fast you can get there with first aid and food. And you better bring a
doctor and the sheriff.”

 
          
“Is
he in bad shape?”

 
          
“I
don’t know. He’s been alone since yesterday. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

 
          
I
hung up on Graves and called Peter Colton. He was still on duty.

 
          
“I’ve
got something for you,” I said.
“Partly for you and partly
for the Department of Justice.”

 
          
“Another migraine headache, no doubt.”
He didn’t sound glad
to hear from me. “This Sampson case is the mess of the century.”

 
          
“It
was. I’m closing it today.”

 
          
His
voice dropped a full octave. “Say again, please.”

 
          
“I
know where Sampson is, and I’ve got the last of the kidnap gang with me now.”

 
          
“Don’t
be coy, for Christ’s sake! Spill it. Where is he?”

 
          
“Out of your territory, in Santa Teresa County.
The Santa
Teresa sheriff is on his way to him now.”

 
          
“So
you called up to brag, you poor narcissistic bastard. I thought you had
something for me and the Department of Justice.”

 
          
“I
have, but not the kidnapping. Sampson wasn’t carried across the state line, so
the F. B.
I,
is out. The case has byproducts, though.
There’s a canyon feeding into Sunset between Brentwood and the Palisades. The
road that leads into it is Hopkins Lane. About five miles in, there’s a black
Buick sedan in the road, past that a lane leading down to an unpainted pine
cottage. There are four people in the cottage. One of them is Troy. Whether it
knows it or not, the Department of Justice wants them.”

 
          
“What for?”

 
          
“Smuggling illegal immigrants.
I’m in a hurry. Have I said
enough?”

 
          
“For
the present,” he said. “Hopkins Lane.”

 
          
Betty
Fraley looked at me blankly when I went back to the car. Meaning returned to
her eyes like a snake coming out of its hole. “Little man, what now?” she said.

 
          
“I
did you a favor. I called the police to pick up Troy and the others.”

 
          
“And
me?”

 
          
“I’m
saving you.” I headed down Sunset towards U.S .101.

 
          
“I’ll
turn state’s evidence against him,” she said.

 
          
“You
don’t have to. I can pin it on him myself.”

 
          
“The smuggling rap?”

 
          
“Right.
Troy disappointed me. Trucking in Mexicans is a
pretty low-grade racket for a gentleman crook. He should be selling the
Hollywood Bowl to visiting firemen.”

 
          
“It
paid him well. He made it pay off double. He took the poor creeps’ money for
the ride,
then
turned them over to the ranches at so
much a head. The Mexicans didn’t know it, but they were being used as
strikebreakers. That way Troy got protection from some of the local cops. Luis
greased the Mexican federals at the other end.”

 
          
“Was
Sampson buying strikebreakers from Troy?”

 
          
“He
was, but you’d never prove it. Sampson was very careful to keep himself in the
clear.”

 
          
“He
wasn’t careful enough,” I said. She was silent after that.

 
          
As
I turned north on the highway I noticed that her face was ugly with pain.
“There’s a pint of whisky in the glove compartment. You can use it to clean
your burns and the scratches on your face. Or you can drink it.”

 
          
She
followed both suggestions and offered me the open bottle.

 
          
“Not
for me.”

 
          
“Because I drank from it first?
All my diseases are mental.”