Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

“But my wife isn’t here. I told you I have no idea where she is.”

“Don’t give me that.” Salaman wagged his head with sad tolerance. “You know where she is, you’ll tell me. If you don’t, well run her down. We got an organization behind us. But that would be doing it the hard way.”

“I understood you were fond of the lady,” I said.

“Not sixty-five grand worth. Anyway,” he added delicately, “we won’t go into the sex angle in front of her old man here. I don’t wanna interfere with anybody’s legal marriage. All I want is my sixty-five thousand.”

“Sixty-five thousand for what?”

“Value received. That’s what it says on the notes. Don’t think she didn’t sign notes.”

“Let me see the notes.”

“I don’t carry them with me. But get it through your head, it’s strictly legal. As you will find out if you make me go into court. But you don’t want that.”

“No,” Ferguson said, “we don’t want that.”

“What did the money go for?”

Salaman flipped his hand palm upward, pointing the thumb at Ferguson. “Tell him.”

Ferguson swallowed a bitter grin. It almost choked him. “Holly lost some money gambling shortly before we were married. She didn’t have the cash to cover her losses. She borrowed from a finance company which is run by a Miami gambling corporation. Mr. Salaman is the major stockholder. The amount was less than fifty thousand, originally, but apparently the interest has mounted up.”

“Interest and service charges. It’s more than six months overdue. And it costs money to collect money. Now an op-a man in your position, Colonel, I’d think you’d want to pay up.”

I said: “Would this be blackmail, by any chance?”

Salaman looked hurt. “I’m sorry you used that word, Mister. If you’re smart, though, you’ll tell your boss to pay up. It wasn’t just the tables the lady blew her money on.”

Ferguson had turned to the window. He spoke with his face hidden, but I could see his ghostly reflection forcing out the words. “Some of the money went for drugs, Gunnarson. If we can believe this man, she started gambling to procure money for drugs. She got in deeper and deeper.”

“What drugs?”

Salaman shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. I’m no pusher.” He smiled his sealed smile. “All I know is what I read in the papers. Like what it said in the columns about her and the lifeguard. This would make a nice splash in the papers.”

Ferguson turned back to the room. He was as pale as his reflection. “What is this?”

“It sounds like blackmail to me,” I said.

Salaman said: “The hell it is. Your boy here isn’t too bright, pops. My advice to you is trade him in on another mouthpiece but fast. You need a boy that’s hep to the public-relations angles, that’s what makes and breaks. I got a right to protect my legitimate interests.”

“I understand that,” Ferguson said with a dismal look at me. “I don’t have the money on hand.”

“Tomorrow will do. Tomorrow at the latest. I can’t sit around in this burg while you make up your mind. I got to get back to some action. How about this time tomorrow?”

“What if I don’t pay then?”

“Your little doll won’t be making no more movies. Maybe horror movies.” Salaman showed his teeth. They were bad.

Ferguson said in a thin and desperate voice: “You’re holding her somewhere, aren’t you? I’ll gladly pay you if you give her back.”

“Are you nuts?” Salaman swung around to face me. “Is this a nuthouse? Is the old guy nuts?”

“You haven’t answered his question.”

“Why should I? It don’t make sense. If I had Holly, she’d be here doing the asking. On her knees.”

“You implied you could put your hands on her.”

“Sooner or later, sure. I can send out a private circular to all the gambling spots, all the major bookies. Sooner or later she’ll turn up at one of them. But the longer I have to wait, the more it costs. And it ain’t only money I mean, bear it in mind.”

“My client and I want to discuss this in private.”

“Sure you do.” Salaman flung out his hand in a generous arc. “Discuss it all night if you want. Just come up with the right answer by tomorrow. And don’t try to get in touch with me. I’ll be in touch with you.” He saluted us with two fingers and walked out. I heard the Ford go up the drive.

Ferguson broke the silence. “What am I going to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Pay them, I suppose.”

“Do you have the money?”

“I can phone Montreal. It’s not the money I’m concerned about.” He added after another silence: “I don’t know what sort of a woman I married.”

“You didn’t marry a saint, that’s evident. Your wife is having her troubles. She was having them before she became your wife. Have you considered cutting your losses?”

“I don’t follow, Gunnarson. I’m not feeling myself.”

He sat down on a long chair, his head resting limply on the back, one leg dragging on the floor.

“You’re not responsible for her debts, unless you want to be.”

“I can’t let her down,” he said weakly.

“She let you down.”

“Perhaps. But I still care for her. I don’t care about the money. Why is everything always put to me in terms of money?”

There was no answer to that question, except that he had money, and had used it to marry a woman half his age. The question was addressed to the ceiling, anyway. He announced to the ceiling: “Damn it, I hate to give in to their dirty threats. But I’m going to pay them their dirty money.”

“That may not be wise. It could lead to a long series of payments. It’s possible, in fact, that you’ve paid them once already.”

He sat up blinking. “How?”

“The money you delivered to Gaines and your wife today-it may be the first installment and this is the second.”

“You think that Salaman is behind the kidnapping?”

“It wasn’t a kidnapping, Colonel. That seems to be clear by now. I keep getting further evidence that your wife conspired with Gaines to collect that money. She may have needed it to pay these gambling debts, if these really are gambling debts. Did she ever mention them to you?”

“No.”

“Or ask you for large sums of money?”

“She didn’t have to. I provided her with ample funds for her needs.”

“Maybe she didn’t think so. A drug habit, for instance, can be terribly expensive.”

“You may think I’m a fool,” he said, “but I simply cannot believe that she is an addict, or ever was. I’ve been living with her here for six months, and never noticed the slightest indication.”

“No peculiar-smelling cigarettes around the house?”

“Holly doesn’t even smoke tobacco.”

“Does she possess a hypodermic syringe? Have needle-marks on her arms or legs?”

“The answer is no to both questions. Her limbs were as clean as a peeled willow.”

“Did she use barbiturates?”

“Very occasionally. I disapproved of them. Holly often said that whiskey was the only tranquillizer she needed.”

“She drank quite heavily, didn’t she?”

“We both did.”

“Drinking doesn’t often go with drug addiction. She may have stopped using drugs and started using alcohol as a substitute. Has she always been a heavy drinker?”

“No. When I first met her in Vancouver, she hardly touched the stuff. I suppose I taught her to drink. She was rather-she was frightened at first, in our relationship. Drinking made it easier for her. But she hasn’t been drinking nearly so much in the last few weeks.”

“Pregnant women usually do cut down.”

“That’s it.” Ferguson’s eyes were moist and bright in his craggy face. “She was afraid of injuring the child-Gaines’s child!”