Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

“Yes. He said that they are in a position to know every move the police make. If I call in the police, they will kill my wife.”

I said: “This may not be the way to save her, Colonel. You’ve had a hard day, and you may not be thinking as straight as usual. In a situation like this, you need all the help you can get. You should take the local police into your confidence. The chief detective, Wills, is a friend of mine. He can advise you about contacting the FBI-”

Ferguson cut me short. “It’s absolutely out of the question. I want your solemn word that you won’t go to the police, or anyone else!”

“You should listen to the man,” Padilla said. “Like he was saying, you’ve had a lot to drink. Maybe you could use a little advice.”

“I know what I have to do. No amount of advice will change the facts. I’m bound and determined to do my part.”

“Let’s hope that they do theirs, Ferguson. I think you’re handling it wrong. But it’s your wife.”

“I’ll trust you to remember that. I don’t want either of you to endanger Holly by going to the police. The criminals have a friend on the force, apparently-”

“That I doubt.”

“I know something about American police. If the RCMP was available, I’d gladly go to them.”

The man’s naïveté would have been funny under other circumstances. I made one last attempt. “Listen to me, Ferguson. I urge you to discuss this matter with someone. Do you have a lawyer you trust?”

“I have in Calgary, Alberta. If you think I’m going to hire you to give me advice I don’t want and won’t take-”

“I’m not trying to get myself hired.”

“That’s good, because I know you American lawyers. I had dealings with some of your breed when Holly was trying to get free from that wretched studio.” He paused, and gave me a canny look. “Of course, if a small retainer will keep you quiet-you can have a couple of hundred.”

“Keep it.”

He smiled grimly, as if an angry atmosphere suited him. “We’re mutually agreed then. Can I trust you to respect my confidence?”

“Naturally.” I realized, a second too late, that I had been manipulated-maneuvered into a dubious position.

“What about you, Padilla?”

“You can trust me, Colonel.”

“THE OLD BOY HAS GUTS,” Padilla said in the car.

“Yes, where his brains should be. I’ve got a good mind to go to the police, in spite of what he said.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not? You surely don’t believe the police are collaborating with the kidnappers?”

“Naw, but it wouldn’t be fair. You got to give him a chance to handle it his own way. He’s no dope, you know. He may talk like a dope, and act like one, but he’s got a head on his shoulders. You don’t make his kind of money without a head on your shoulders.”

“I don’t make his kind of money, period. Where did he get his money?”

“Out of the ground, he told me. He started out on a ranch in Alberta where they discovered oil. He used his royalties to buy more oil rights, and the thing just went on mounting up. I guess he ran out of things to buy in Canada, so he moved in on California.”

“And bought Holly May?”

“I don’t think it was like that. If you ask me, the lady was never for sale.”

“She is now.”

“Yeah. I only wish I could do something.”

We emerged from the hedge-lined private lane. With a sudden, angry twist of the wheel, Padilla swung the big car into the road. “Where do you want me to drop you off?”

“Downtown, if you have the time.”

“I have the time. I’m not going back to the Club tonight, let Frankie wash the glasses. Maybe I’ll cut over after and see how the Colonel’s doing. He shouldn’t ought to be alone all night. Where downtown?”

“Pelly Street.”

“What you want to go down there for? You could get yourself rolled.”

“That’s not what I had in mind. You know that street pretty well, don’t you?”

“Like the back of my hand.” In the glow of the dash lights, he glanced at the back of his hand. “I just moved my mother off it within the last four years, when the old man died. Four years ago next November twenty-three.”

“Do you know Gus Donato?”

“I know him. Frankie told me he heard on the radio that Gus is wanted for murder. Old man Broadman. Is that what you heard?”

“It’s no rumor. How well do you know him, Tony?”

“About as well as I want to. I see him on the street. I know his brother better, Manuel. He’s the worker in the family. Manuel and me was in the same class at Sacred Heart school one year, before he quit to go to work. Gus has always been a cross on his back. They sent him up to Preston when he was sixteen years old.”

“What for?”

“Stealing cars and stuff. He was stealing cars when he was so little he couldn’t see over the top of the steering wheel. I guess they taught him some fancier tricks at Preston. He’s been in and out of jail most of his life. Now he’s really fixed himself good.”

Padilla’s tone was carefully indifferent. He performed his ritual of rolling down the window and spitting.

“I talked to his brother and his wife tonight. The wife claims he’s innocent.”

“Gus’s wife?”

“Secundina, her brother-in-law called her. You know her, don’t you?”

“I know her. Working in different kinds of bars, you see a lot of people. I watch them the way you watch the flies on the wall. But let’s get this straight, Mr. Gunnarson, they’re not my kind of people.” His tone was formal. The discussion had put an obscure strain on our relationship.

“I realize that, Tony.”

“Why ask me questions about them, then?”

“Because you know Holly May, and want to do something for her. There seems to be some connection between what happened to her and the Broadman killing. Gus Donato may be the key to it. And I got an impression talking to his relatives that he may be ready to give himself up. If he’s approached carefully, through his brother, or through his wife-”

“I don’t like to step on cops’ toes.”

“Neither do I. But I’m within my rights as a lawyer in trying to reach Donato and talk him into surrendering.”

“Sure, we could get knocked off, too. That’s within anybody’s rights.” But Padilla was with me. “I know where Manuel lives.”

The shoreline road crossed the highway on an overpass and curved around to the left to join the northbound lane. Neon-lighted clouds hung low over the city, changing like red smoke as we moved under them.

The freeway slanted up across a wilderness of railroad sidings, packing plants, and warehouses, and then the residences of the lower town. Its swarming courts and overflowing cottages were squeezed like living sponge between the freeway and the railroad. Padilla turned off on a ramp and circled under the freeway between concrete pillars that seemed as ancient and deserted as Coliseum arches. Somewhere ahead, the sound of a siren rose in jungle howling and fell away into animal sobbing.

“Jeeze, I hate that noise,” Padilla said. “Practically every night of my life for twenty years I heard that noise. It’s the main reason I had to get out to the other side of the tracts.”

Manuel Donato lived on this side of the tracts, in a white clapboard bungalow which stood out among its neighbors. The rectangle of lawn behind its picket fence was green and smooth, hedged by white-blossoming oleanders. The porch light was on. Padilla knocked on the door.

In the yard next door, shadowed by the oleanders, some boys and girls were playing late giggling games. One of the boys raised his voice. “Donato ain’t home.”