Ross MacDonald - The Ferguson Affair

“What did you do? I think I know, but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

“Nothing much. I brought Gaines and Hilda back here and kept them on the hook for a while, wondering what to do with them. Some way or other they got the idea that I’d be pleased and happy if Holly’s marriage didn’t work out too well. I talk too much sometimes when I’ve been drinking-”

“I’ll translate that. You blackmailed Gaines and Hilda into coming out here and trying to break up Holly’s marriage.”

“That’s a rough way to put it, Bill. Gaines needed no urging. He had his own ideas about Holly May. I think he got delusions of grandeur traveling with her double. He told me one night when he was high that he was going to take her away from Ferguson and marry her himself.”

“What was he high on?”

“Heroin. They both take heroin when they can get it.”

I stood up behind my desk. Speare sat down quickly, for fear I was going to hit him. I almost hit him anyway, with my left hand. “That was a fine plan you had, turning loose two hopped-up criminals on your ex-client.”

“It wasn’t such a good idea, Bill. I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way.” His face had broken up like crackleware. “Look. I’ll make a deal with you. Forget about this little business, keep my name out of it, and I’ll give you something you really want.”

“I have everything I really want.”

“You don’t have Gaines and the woman,” he said softly.

“You know where they are?”

“I might.”

“Let’s have it.”

“I said a deal. If this thing spills in the L.A. press, I’m a nothing man, I’m dead. I’m back selling stockings from door to door.”

“Have you sold stockings from door to door?”

“Not in recent years, but my uncle does. I guess I can always get my old job back, if you insist on ruining me.” He watched me through his pathos. He was sobering up. “Do I deserve to be ruined, Bill?”

“Stop calling me Bill.”

“Whatever you say. Do we make a deal?”

I gave it some thought. It didn’t take much thought, with the entire country being ransacked for the pair.

“It’s a deal. Give me Gaines and the woman, and I’ll forget you. With pleasure.”

“I can’t guarantee Gaines for sure. Hilda says he ran out on her. But she should be able to lead you to him.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Oh yes. I’ve talked to her. You think I blackmailed her! She’s been blackmailing me! ”

“What for, or need I ask?”

He hung his head. His bald spot shone like a wet egg. He covered it with a hand that was pocked with droplets of sweat. “She threatened to wreck my reputation unless I gave her money. I guess she’s afraid to spend the ransom money. Or else Gaines really did run out on her. I’ve been putting her off with peanuts for the last two days, and incidentally slowly going crazy. She’s sitting there like a ticking bomb. Last night she threatened to shoot me-”

“Sitting where? Where is she?”

“I’ll tell you. Is it a deal?”

“I said it was.”

He raised his eyes to my face and studied it. “I guess I can trust you. I got to trust somebody. Anything to get her off my back. She’s holed up in a beach shack between the Palisades and Malibu, on 101 Highway.” He gave me the address. “It’s a brown shingle shack on the right-hand side of the highway, just a few hundred yards past a drive-in named Jack’s. I was supposed to meet her there tonight, with five thousand dollars.”

“What time tonight?”

“Now. I’m supposed to be there now.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“All right. Whatever you say. Now that we’ve got this business settled, how about a short one to celebrate?”

“I don’t keep liquor here.”

“Do you mind if I run out for a quick one? I need a drink but badly.”

“Go ahead.”

He scuttled out. I telephoned Ferguson.

Speare never did come back. His silver racing car was still parked in front of my office, helmet and goggles on the seat, when Ferguson and I left. Ferguson drove, and I talked, from Buenavista to Malibu.

Beyond the deserted beach, the ocean was the color of iron. The moon had shrunk to a sliver of itself. At Zuma we could hear the surf thundering in like doom.

“It’s a beastly situation,” Ferguson said.

“They get that way sometimes when you let them lie for a quarter of a century.”

“Please don’t moralize. I’ve had the whole thing out with myself. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already thought.”

“Have you had it out with your wife?”

“Yes. She’s going to stay with me whatever comes. This thing has brought us closer somehow-closer than we were. I know now that she loves me.”

“You’re lucky to have such a woman.”

“I realize that, Gunnarson. Both Holly and I have realized a number of things. I thought I could start a brand-new life at the age of fifty-six, as if I hadn’t already had a life. Holly was doing the same thing in her way. She tried to turn her back on everything, her family, the whole past. But the past has its revenges.

“It has its compensations, too,” he added. “We went to see Holly’s mother yesterday, in Mountain Grove. I imagined that she’d spent her life hating me. She hasn’t. She forgave me years ago. It’s good to be forgiven.”

“Has she had any word from Hilda?”

“Not recently. Hilda showed up there several weeks ago. She managed to convince her mother that she was the one who had become an actress and married-a wealthy man.” He was embarrassed by this reference to himself.

“Tell me, Ferguson, does Hilda know that you’re her father?”

“I’m not certain. Kate Dotery said she told her my name when Hilda was a young girl. The chances are that Hilda doesn’t remember.”

“If she does remember, it may explain the crime-I mean the crime she attempted against her sister. There’s no question she left her to burn.”

“I know, and it wasn’t her first attempt. She attacked Holly several times before, once with a butcher knife, once with a pan of hot grease. I think that’s the basic reason why Holly severed connections with her family. The butcher-knife episode occurred just a day or two before she ran away. She took off with a stocking salesman named Sperovich when she was sixteen. Holly’s had a hard life, too.”

There was nothing in his voice but sympathy, and an undertone of sadness. The jealousy and the rage, the desperate hopefulness, had burned out. He drove at a steady sixty toward whatever final revenge the past was going to take.

“Did you bring your gun, Ferguson?”

“I did. I don’t intend to use it, unless Gaines is there. I have no compunction for him.”

The highway climbed away from the sea among coastal hills. The hills were dark and barren. There was very little traffic. Ferguson let the long grade slow the car. He was driving mechanically.

“Do you believe this Speare is telling the truth? She’s actually there?”

“She’s there, all right. Speare had nothing to gain by inventing the story.”

“What am I going to say to her, Gunnarson?”

“Nothing that you can say will change the situation very much. Tell her you’re her father, you want to help her.”

“But what good can I do her?”

“We’ll be helping her simply by bringing her in.”

“And after that?”

“She’ll need the best criminal lawyer and the best psychiatrists your money can procure. They won’t be able to get her off, of course, but they can save her from the extreme penalty. No one with strong financial backing is ever executed.”

“Money again, eh?”