Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

My eyes were still on the girl, without quite taking her in. She became restless under my stare. Everything about her, varnished hair, shadowed lids, gleaming red lips, breasts that thrust themselves on the attention, was meant to attract stares and hold them. But the girl behind the attractions was uneasy when they worked.

The advertisements didn’t tell you what to do next.

She looked up at me, her green eyes defensively hard. A different voice, her own, said: “Well?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be obnoxious. I was struck by your resemblance to someone.”

“I know. Holly May. People keep telling me that. A lot of good it does me.”

“Are you interested in acting?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I’d be home in Indiana, to coin a phrase. Raising brats.” The nuptial violins in her voice had gone badly out of tune. “Would you be in pictures?”

“I played a starring role in the family album. That was as far as it went.”

“The Family Album? I never heard of it. Has it been released?”

“I keep it at home in a trunk,” I said. “The family album. Photographs.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“It was one of my feebler efforts. Forgive me.”

“That’s all right,” she said magnanimously. “Mr. Speare says I got-I have no sense of humor, anyway.” She frowned at the clock. “I wonder what’s keeping him.”

“I can wait. Do you know Holly May?”

“I wouldn’t say I knew her. She left town a few months after I got this job. But I used to see her come in and out.”

“What sort of person was she?”

“It’s hard for me to tell. Some of the girls in the studios thought she was real cool-real down-to-earth, no airs about her and all. At least that was what they said. With me she was always standoffish. I don’t think she liked me.” After a pause, she said: “Maybe she didn’t like me because I look like her. She did a double take the first time she ever saw me.”

And after another pause: “Some people think I’m better-looking than her, even. But a fat lot of good it does me. I tried to get Mr. Speare to get me a job standing in for her. He said I didn’t know how to handle myself. So I took this course in standing, walking and standing. It cost me a hundred and sixty dollars, and just when I was getting real good at it, she had to go and give up the movie business.”

“That was a tough break for you,” I said. “I wonder why she left.”

“She wanted to get married. But it’s still a good question if you ever saw him . Why a girl would give up a career to marry him . Of course they say he owns half the oil in Canada, but he’s just an ugly old man. I wouldn’t marry him for all the money in the world.”

Her voice and her look were faintly doubtful. She sat with her green gaze resting unconsciously on me, balancing Ferguson’s money against his personal charms.

“You know Colonel Ferguson, do you?”

“I saw him once. He marched in here one day last summer. Mr. Speare was in conference with some very important clients, but that made no difference to him. He walked into Mr. Speare’s private office and started an argument, right in front of a producing star. ”

“What was the argument about?”

“Her studio didn’t want her to get married. Neither did Mr. Speare. You can hardly blame him. She had a chance to be a real big name. But that wasn’t good enough for her.” She went into meditation again. “Imagine getting the breaks she got, and not even wanting them.”

A man in a blue Italian suit and a confidential tie came in breathing dramatically. When I stood up, I was tall enough to look down at the bald spot on top of his sleek dark head.

“Mr. Speare?”

“Yeah. You must be Gunnarson. I’m twenty minutes late. They were taping a new show and a lady who shall be nameless got hysterical when they wouldn’t let her use her idiot cards. So I had to hold her hand, in case you wonder where I got the talon wounds. Come in, will you?”

I followed him along a skylit corridor to a room which contained, in addition to office equipment, a couch and a portable bar. He went to the latter like a homing pigeon. “I need a drink. Will you join me?”

“A short bourbon will be fine.”

He poured me a long one, and himself another. “Sit down. How do you like the furniture? The drapes? I chose everything myself, I wanted a place where a man can relax as he creates.”

“You’re an artist, are you?”

“More than that,” he said between gulps of bourbon. “I create artists. I make names and reputations.”

He flung his empty hand toward the wall beside his desk. It was covered with photographs of faces, the bold, shy, wistful, arrogant, hungry faces of actors. I recognized some of the faces, but didn’t see Holly May’s among them. Most of them were actors who hadn’t been heard of for years.

“How is Holly?” he said, reading my mind. “I took her picture down, in a moment of childish pique. But I still keep it in my desk drawer. Tell her that.”

“I will if I see her.”

“I thought you were her lawyer.”

“I’m her husband’s lawyer.”

A kind of gray sickness touched his face for an instant. He covered his bald spot with his left hand, as if he feared scalping or had already been scalped; and gulped the remainder of his drink. This gave him strength to clown it. “What does he want? The rest of my blood? Tell him I’m all out of blood, he can go to a blood bank.”

“Did he treat you so badly?”

“Did he? He fixed me good. Three years of work, building her up, talking her into parts, keeping her out of trouble, all gone to bloody hell. Just when she was really getting hot, she had to marry him . He’s a rough man. As you doubtless know if you work for him.”

“I don’t work for him. I give him legal advice.”

“I see.” He poured himself another drink. “Does he take it?”

“I’m hoping he will.”

“Then advise him to take a running jump in the Pacific Ocean. I know a nice deep place, complete with sharks.” He fortified himself with half of his second drink, and said: “Well, let’s have it. What does he want from me, and what is it going to cost me?”

“Nothing. I’ll be frank with you.” But not so very frank. “I came to you more or less on my own, for information.”

“What about?”

“Mrs. Ferguson.”

He considered this, and drew the conclusion I wanted him to. “How is the marriage working out?”

“It isn’t. You’ll keep this to yourself, of course.”

“Of course,” he said, struggling to suppress his glee. “I knew it couldn’t last. A doll like Holly, a girl with her future, tying herself to a dodo. Who’s divorcing who?”

“It’s too early to talk in those terms. Put it this way. Colonel Ferguson married a woman he knew nothing about. Six or seven months later he’s decided that perhaps he ought to look into her background. I thought perhaps you could help.”

“Let down her back hair, eh? I wouldn’t want to do that to a client, not even an ex-client. Besides,” he said with a lopsided smile and a pass at the top of his head, “what do I get out of it?”

He had a fishy look. I felt no compunction in playing him like a fish. “She’s under contract to you, isn’t she? If she works?”

“Why should she go back to work, with the kind of settlement he can make on her?”

“There won’t be any settlement, if he divorces her. Or gets an annulment.”

His secret glee flared up again. He thought that we were having a meeting of minds. “I see. What did you say your name was? Bill?”

“Bill.”

“Call me Mike, Bill.” He went around his desk and slumped in the swivel chair behind it. “What kind of dope do you need?”