Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (8 page)

 
          
She
leaned toward me with wide, unfocused eyes. I couldn’t tell whether she was
kidding me or herself.

 
          
“I’m
everybody’s friend,” I said, to break the spell. “Children and dogs adore me. I
raise flowers and have green thumbs.”

 
          
“You’re
a cynic,” she answered sulkily. “I thought you were going to be sympathetic,
but you’re in the Air
triplicity
and I’m in the
Water.”

 
          
“We’d
make a wonderful air-sea rescue team.”

 
          
She
smiled and said chidingly: “Don’t you believe in the stars?”

 
          
“Do
you?”

 
          
“Of
course I do - in a purely scientific way. When you look at the evidence, you
simply can’t deny it. I’m Cancer, for example, and anybody can see that I’m the
Cancer type. I’m sensitive and imaginative; I can’t do without love. The people
I love can twist me around their little finger, but I can be stubborn when I
have to be. I’ve been unlucky in marriage, like so many other
Cancerians
. Are you married, Archer?”

 
          
“Not
now.”

 
          
“That
means you were. You’ll marry again. Gemini always does. And he often marries a
woman older than himself, did you know that?”

 
          
“No.”
Her insistent voice was pushing me slightly off balance, threatening to
dominate the conversation and me. “You’re very convincing,” I said.

 
          
“What
I’m telling you is the truth.”

 
          
“You
should do it professionally. There’s money in it for a smooth operator with a
convincing spiel.”

 
          
Her
candid eyes narrowed to two dark slits like peepholes in a fort. She studied me
through them, made a tactical decision, and opened them wide again. They were
dark pools of innocence, like poisoned wells.

 
          
“Oh,
no,” she said. “I never do this professionally. It’s a talent I have, a gift -
Cancer is frequently psychic - and I feel it’s my duty to use it.
But not for money - only for my friends.”

 
          
“You’re
lucky to have an independent income.”

 
          
Her
thin-stemmed glass twirled out of her fingers and broke in two pieces on the
table. “That’s Gemini for you,” she said.
“Always looking for
facts.”

 
          
I
felt a slight twinge of doubt and shrugged it off. She’d fired at random and
hit the target by accident. “I didn’t mean to be curious,” I said.

 
          
“Oh,
I know that.” She rose suddenly, and I felt the weight of her body standing
over me. “Let’s get out of here, Archer. I’m starting to drop things again.
Let’s go some place we can talk.”

 
          
“Why not?”

 
          
She
left an unbroken bill on the table and walked out with heavy dignity. I
followed her, pleased with my startling success but feeling a little like a
male spider about to be eaten by a female spider.

 
          
Russell
was at his table with his head in his arms. Timothy was yelping at the captain
of waiters like a terrier who has cornered some small defenseless animal. The
captain of waiters was explaining that the au gratin potatoes would be ready in
fifteen minutes.

 
          
In
the Hollywood Roosevelt bar she complained of the air and said she felt
wretched and old. Nonsense, I told her, but we moved to the Zebra Room. She had
shifted to Irish whisky, which she drank straight. In the Zebra Room she
accused a man at the next table of looking at her contemptuously. I suggested
more air. She drove down Wilshire as if she was trying to break through into
another dimension. I had to park the Buick for her at the Ambassador. I’d left
my car at Swift’s.

 
          
She
quarreled with the Ambassador barman on the grounds that he laughed at her when
he turned his back. I took her to the downstairs bar at the
Huntoon
Park, which wasn’t often crowded. Wherever we went, there were people who
recognized her, but nobody joined us or stood up. Not even the waiters made a
fuss over her. She was on her way out.

 
          
Except
for a couple leaning together at the other end of the bar, the
Huntoon
Park was deserted. The thickly carpeted, softly
lighted basement was a funeral parlor where the evening we had killed was laid
out. Mrs. Estabrook was pale as a corpse, but she was vertical, able to see,
talk, drink, and possibly even think.

 
          
I
was steering her in the direction of the
Valerio
,
hoping that she’d name it. A few more drinks, and I could take the risk of
suggesting it myself. I was drinking with her, but not enough to affect me. I
made inane conversation, and she didn’t notice the difference. I was waiting. I
wanted her far enough gone to say whatever came into her head. Archer the
heavenly twin and midwife to oblivion.

 
          
I
looked at my face in the mirror behind the bar and didn’t like it too well. It
was getting thin and predatory-looking. My nose was too
narrow,
my ears were too close to my head. My eyelids were the kind that overlapped at
the outside corners and made my eyes look triangular in a way that I usually
liked. Tonight my eyes were like tiny stone wedges hammered between the lids.

 
          
She
leaned forward over the bar with her chin in her hands, looking straight down
into her half-empty liqueur glass. The pride that had kept her body erect and
organized her face had seeped away. She was hunched there tasting the
bitterness at the bottom of her life, droning out elegies: “He never took care
of himself, but he had the body of a wrestler and the head of an Indian chief.
He was part Indian. Nothing mean about him, though.
One sweet
guy.
Quiet and easy, never talked much.
But
passionate, and a real one-woman man, the last I ever seen.
He got T. B.
and went off in one summer. It broke me up. I never got over it since. He was
the only man I ever loved.”

 
          
“What
did you say his name was?”

 
          
“Bill.”
She looked at me slyly. “I didn’t say. He was my foreman. I had one of the
first big places in the valley. We were together for a year, and then he died.
That was twenty-five years ago, and I been feeling ever since I might as well
be dead myself.”

 
          
She
raised her large tearless eyes and met my glance in the mirror. I wanted to
respond to her melancholy look, but I didn’t know what to do with my face.

 
          
I
tried smiling to encourage myself. I was a good Joe after all. Consorter with
roughnecks, tarts, hard cases and easy marks; private eye at the keyhole of
illicit bedrooms; informer to jealousy, rat behind the walls, hired gun to
anybody with fifty dollars a day; but a good Joe after all. The wrinkles formed
at the corners of my eyes, the wings of my nose; the lips drew back from the
teeth, but there was no smile. All I got was a lean famished look like a
coyote’s sneer. The face had seen too many bars, too many rundown hotels and
crummy love nests, too many courtrooms and prisons, post-mortems and police
lineups, too many nerve ends showing like tortured worms. If I found the face
on a stranger, I wouldn’t trust it. I caught myself wondering how it looked to
Miranda Sampson.

 
          
“To
hell with the three-day parties,” Mrs. Estabrook said.
“To
hell with the horses and the emeralds and the boats.
One good friend is
better than any of them, and I haven’t got one good friend. Sim Kuntz said he
was my friend, and he tells me I’m making my last picture. I lived my life
twenty-five years ago, and I’m all washed up. You don’t want to get mixed up
with me, Archer.”

 
          
She
was right. Still, I was interested, apart from my job. She’d had a long journey
down from a high place, and she knew what suffering was. Her voice had dropped
its phony correctness and the other things she had learned from studio coaches.
It was coarse and pleasantly harsh. It placed her childhood in Detroit or
Chicago or Indianapolis, at the beginning of the century, on the wrong side of
town.

 
          
She
drained her glass and stood up. “Take me home, Archer.”

 
          
I
slid off my stool with gigolo alacrity and took her by the arm. “You can’t go
home like this. You need another drink to snap you back.”

 
          
“You’re
nice.” My skin was thin enough to feel the irony. “Only I can’t take this
place. It’s a morgue. For Christ’s sake,” she yelled at the bartender, “where
are all the merrymakers?”

 
          
“Aren’t
you a merrymaker, madam?”

 
          
I
pulled her away from the start of another quarrel, up the steps and out. There
was a light fog in the air, blurring the
neons
. Above
the tops of the buildings the starless sky was dull and low. She shivered, and
I felt the tremor in her arm. “There’s a good bar
next street
up,” I said.
“The
Valerio
?”

 
          
“I
think that’s it.”

 
          
“All right.
One more drink, then I got to go home.” I opened
the door of her car and helped her in. Her breast leaned against my shoulder
heavily. I moved back. I preferred a less complicated kind of pillow, stuffed
with feathers, not memories and frustrations.

 
          
The
waitress in the
Valerio
cantina called her by name,
escorted us to a booth,
emptied
the empty ash tray.
The bartender, a smooth-faced young Greek, came all the way around from behind
the bar to say hello to her and to ask after Mr. Sampson.

 
          
“He’s
still in Nevada,” she said. I was watching her face, and she caught my look.
“A very good friend of mine.
He stops here when he’s in
town.”

 
          
The
two-block ride, or her welcome, had done her good. She was almost sprightly.
Maybe I’d made a mistake.

 
          
“A
great old guy,” the bartender said. “We miss him around here.”

 
          
“Ralph’s
a wonderful, wonderful man,” said Mrs. Estabrook.
“One sweet
guy.”

 
          
The
bartender took our order and went away.

 
          
“Have
you cast his horoscope?” I said.
“This friend of yours?”

 
          
“Now,
how did you know? He’s Capricorn.
One sweet guy, but a very
dominant type.
He’s had tragedy in his life, though. His only boy was
killed in the war. Ralph’s sun was squared by Uranus, you see. You wouldn’t
know what that can mean to a
Capricornian
.”

 
          
“No.
Does it mean much to him?”

 
          
“Yes,
it does. Ralph has been developing his spiritual side. Uranus is against him,
but the other planets are with him. It’s given him courage to know that.” She
leaned toward me confidentially. “I wish I could show you the room I
redecorated for him. It’s in one of the bungalows here, but they wouldn’t let
us in.”

 
          
“Is
he staying here now?”

 
          
“No,
he’s in Nevada. He has a very lovely home on the desert.”

 
          
“Ever
been there?”

 
          
“You
ask so many questions.” She smiled side-eyed in ghastly coquetry. “You wouldn’t
be getting jealous?”

 
          
“You
told me you had no friends.”

 
          
“Did
I say that? I was forgetting Ralph.”

 
          
The
bartender brought our drinks, and I sipped mine. I was facing the back of the
room. A door in the wall beside the silent grand piano opened into the
Valerio
lobby. Alan Taggert and Miranda came through the
door together.

 
          
“Excuse
me,” I said to Mrs. Estabrook.

 
          
Miranda
saw me when I stood up, and started forward. I put a finger to my mouth and
waved her back with the other hand. She moved away with a wide-mouthed,
bewildered look.

 
          
Alan
was quicker. He took her arm and hustled her out the door. I followed them. The
bartender was mixing a drink. The waitress was serving a customer. Mrs.
Estabrook hadn’t looked up. The door closed behind me.

 
          
Miranda
turned on me. “I don’t understand this. You’re supposed to be looking for
Ralph.”

 
          
“I’m
working on a contact. Go away, please.”

 
          
“But
I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.” She was strained to the point of
tears.

 
          
I
said to Taggert: “Take her away before she spoils my night’s work.
Out of the city, if possible.”
Three hours of Fay had
sharpened my temper.

 
          
“But
Mrs. Sampson’s been phoning for you,” he said.

 
          
A
Filipino bellboy was standing against the wall hearing everything we said. I
took them around the corner into the half-lit lobby.
“What
about?”

 
          
“She’s
heard from Ralph.” Miranda’s eyes glowed amber like a deer’s.
“A special-delivery letter.
He wants her to send him money.
Not send it exactly, but have it ready for him.”

 
          
“How much money?”

 
          
“A hundred thousand dollars.”

 
          
“Say
that again.”

 
          
“He
wants her to cash a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds.”

 
          
“Does
she have that much?”

 
          
“She
hasn’t, but she can get it. Bert Graves has Ralph’s power of attorney.”

 
          
“What’s
she supposed to do with the money?”

 
          
“He
said we’ll hear from him again or he’ll send a messenger for it.”

 
          
“You’re
sure the letter’s from him?”

 
          
“Elaine
says it’s in his writing.”

 
          
“Does
he say where he is?”

 
          
“No, but the letter’s postmarked Santa Maria.
He must have
been there today.”

 
          
“Not
necessarily. What does Mrs. Sampson want me to do?”

 
          
“She
didn’t say. I suppose she wants your advice.”

 
          
“All
right, this is it. Tell her to have the money ready, but not to hand it over to
anybody without proof that your father’s alive.”

 
          
“You
think he’s dead?” Her hand plucked at the neckline of her dress.