Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

I stepped between them. “Colonel Ferguson will be in touch with you later, when he’s himself.”

I got hold of Ferguson’s bony elbow and propelled him through the gathering crowd to my car.

Mahan pursued us, waving citation blanks. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To a doctor. If I were you, officer, I wouldn’t push this any further right now.”

I opened the door for Ferguson. He got in, disdaining my assistance. Mahan stood and watched us drive away, his pad of blanks crumpled in his hand.

“You’re Johnny-on-the-spot, aren’t you?” Ferguson said.

“I happened to be listening to the local police calls, and got the first report of your accident. Do you have a doctor in town?”

“I never go to doctors.” He emitted a sort of snuffling neigh through his damaged nose. “Look here, I need a drink. Isn’t there someplace we can go for a drink?”

“If you say so.”

I took him to a bar and grill on the edge of the lower town. The noon-hour crowd had thinned down to a few tables of men drinking their lunches. I hustled Ferguson to the rear of the establishment and suggested he wash his face.

He came out of the men’s room looking a little better, and ordered rye on the rocks. I ordered a corned-beef sandwich. When the waiter was out of hearing, he pushed his battered face across the table toward me. His eyes were bleak. “What sort of a man are you? Can I trust you?”

“I think so.”

“You haven’t simply been hanging around hoping that some of my money will rub off on you?”

It was an insulting question, but I didn’t let it insult me. I was willing to put up with a good deal for the sake of candor. “It’s a natural human hope, isn’t it? Money isn’t an overriding motive with me. As you may have noticed.”

“Yes. You’ve talked to me straight from the shoulder. I’d like to feel I can do the same with you.” His voice altered. “God knows I have to talk to someone.”

“Shoot. In my profession you learn to listen, and you learn to forget.”

The waiter brought his drink. Ferguson sucked at it greedily and set the glass down with a rap. “I want to engage your professional services, Mr. Gunnarson. That will insure your forgetting, won’t it? Confidential relationship, and all that.”

“I take it seriously.”

“I don’t mean to be offensive. I realize I have been offensive, when this matter came up between us. I apologize.” He was trying to be quiet and charming. I preferred him loud and natural.

“No apology needed. You’ve been under quite a strain. But we’re not getting anywhere.”

“We have if we’ve reached an agreement. Will you be my legal adviser in this matter?”

“I’ll be glad to. So long as it doesn’t interfere with my representing my other client. Other clients.”

“How could that be?”

“We don’t need to go into detail. I have a client in the county jail who was involved with Larry Gaines. Innocently involved, like your wife.”

His eyes winced.

“And like your wife,” I added, “she’s suffering out the consequences.”

Ferguson took a deep, yawning breath. “I saw Gaines today. It’s why I lost my head. I threw discretion to the winds and tried to run him down. God knows what will happen now.”

“Have you delivered the money?”

“Yes. It’s when I saw him. I was instructed to procure a cardboard carton and place the money in it, then leave the carton on the front seat of my car, with the door unlocked. I parked the car where they told me to, on Ocean Boulevard near the foot of the pier, and left it standing there with the carton of money in it. Then I was supposed to walk out to the end of the wharf. It’s a distance of a couple of hundred yards.”

“I know the place. My wife and I often go there.”

“Then you probably remember that there’s a public telescope on the pier. I couldn’t resist dropping a dime in the slot and training the thing on my car. It’s how I happened to see them.”

“Them?”

“Him. I meant to say him. Gaines. He pulled up beside my car, got out and retrieved the carton, and away he went. If I had had a deer rifle with me, I could have plugged him. I wish I had.”

“What kind of a car was he driving?”

“A fairly new car, green in color. I don’t know what make exactly. I’m not familiar with the cheaper makes.”

“It was one of the cheaper makes?”

“Yes, a Chevrolet perhaps.”

“Or a Plymouth?”

“It may have been a Plymouth. At any rate it was Gaines who got out and picked up the money. And I saw red. I sprinted the length of the pier and chased th-chased him in my car. You know the result.”

He gingerly touched his swelling nose with his fingertips.

“You don’t lie well, Colonel. Who was with Gaines in the green Plymouth?”

“No one.”

But he wouldn’t meet my eyes. His gaze roved around the room and fastened on an elk head high on the opposite wall above the bar. The waiter brought my sandwich. Ferguson ordered another double rye.

I ate mechanically. My mind was racing, fitting together pieces of fact. The picture was far from complete, but its outlines were forming.

“Was your wife in the car with Gaines?”

His head hung as if his neck had been broken. “She was driving.”

“Are you certain of the identification?”

“Positive.”

His second drink arrived. He drank it down like hemlock. Remembering the previous night at the Foothill Club, I persuaded him not to order a third. “We have some more talking to do, Ferguson. We don’t have to do it here.”

“I like it here.” His gaze repeated its circuit of the room, which was almost deserted now, and returned to the friendly elk.

“Ever hunt elk?”

“Indeed I have. I have several fine heads at home.”

“Where is home, exactly?”

“I keep most of my trophies in my lodge at Banff. But that’s not exactly what you mean, is it? You mean where I really live, and that’s hard to say. I have a house in Calgary, and I keep hotel suites in Montreal and Vancouver. None of them are places I feel at home.” Like other lonely men, he seemed glad to be relieved of the burden of loneliness. “Home for me was always the family homestead in Alberta. But it’s nothing but an oil field now.”

“You haven’t mentioned your place here.”

“No. I feel decidedly out of place in California. I came here because it offered investment opportunities, and because Holly was unwilling to leave California.”

“Was there conflict between you on the subject?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no. I wanted to please her. We’ve only been married six months.” He’d been still and quiet for a few minutes, but the thought of his wife was too much for him. He twisted in his seat as though he’d been kicked in the groin. “Why are we beating around the bush, with this talk of homes and places?”

“I’m trying to get some idea of you and your situation. I can’t very well advise you in the dark. Would you object to some more personal questions, about your wife and your relationship?”

“I don’t object. In fact, it may help to clarify my own thinking.” He paused, and said in astonishment, like a man who has made a personal discovery: “I’m an emotional man, you know. I used to think of myself as a cold fish. Holly changed all that. I hardly know whether to be glad or sorry.”

“You’re pretty ambivalent about her, aren’t you? Running hot and cold, I mean.”

“I know what you mean, very well. I’m scalding and freezing. The two conditions are just about equally painful.” Ferguson kept surprising me. He added: “ Odi et amo. Excrucior! Do you know Latin, Gunnarson?”