Росс Макдональд - The Name is Archer

“She’s very much your daughter, apparently. Is she here with you?”

“No, she’s not. I know why you’ve come, of course. I warned Maude you’d try and drag her back to the salt mines.”

“Then you’ve seen her. Where is she?”

“I have no intention of telling you. Maude is well and happy – happy for the first time in her life.”

“You’re going to tell me,” he said between clenched teeth.

He grabbed her pipestem wrist. She batted her eyes in fearful defiance, her seamed lips shrinking back from her long teeth. I took him by the shoulder and the arm and jerked him back on his heels, breaking his grip.

“Take it easy, Harlan. You can’t force information out of people.”

He gave me a look of dull hatred, then transferred it to his mother. She returned it.

“The same old Reginald,” she said, “who used to love pinning beetles to a board. Who is this gentleman, by the way?”

“Mr. Archer.” He added heavily: “A private detective.”

She flung up her hands and grimaced. “Ah, Reggie. You’re outdoing yourself. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you, Mother. But you and I are not the point at issue. Please don’t try to divert me. I want to know where Maude and her – her consort are.”

“You won’t find out from me. Aren’t you satisfied with thirty years of Maude’s life? Do you have to have it all?”

“I know what’s best for Maude. I doubt that you do, after the frightful hash you’ve made of your own life.” He looked with contempt at the peeling walls, the patched screen door, the discarded old woman who had taken refuge behind it. “If you’re responsible for this brainstorm of hers–”

He ran out of words. Fury had strung him as taut as a wire. I could practically hear him hum. And I kept my shoulder between him and the door.

“It’s no brainstorm,” she said. “Maude found a man who suited her at last, and she had the good sense to forsake everything for him. Just as I did.” Memory smoothed her face; a surge of romantic feeling sang like a warped record through her voice: “I’m proud of my part in this.”

“You admit it, then?”

“Why shouldn’t I? I brought her and Leonard Lister together last spring, when she was here with me. Leonard’s a splendid man, and they took to each other at once. Maude needed a powerful male personality to break through to her, after all those spinster years–”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Leonard Lister,” I said.

The old woman’s hand had gone to her mouth. She said between yellow fingers: “I didn’t mean to tell you. Now that you’ve got it out of me – you must have heard of Leonard. He’s a brilliant creative artist in the theatre.”

“Have you ever heard of him, Archer?”

“No.”

“Leonard Lister?” the old woman said. “Surely you know his name, if you live in Los Angeles. He’s a well-known director in the experimental theatre. He’s even taught at the University. Leonard has wonderful plans for making poetic film, like Cocteau’s in France.”

“No doubt his plans include Maude’s money,” Harlan said.

“You would think of such a thing. But it’s not true. He loves her for herself.”

“I see. I see. And you’re the honest broker who procured your own daughter for a fortune-hunter. How much is this brilliant fellow going to pay you for your services?”

The sunset had faded out. Deprived of its borrowed color, the old woman’s face behind the screen was drawn and bloodless.

“You know it’s not true, and you mustn’t say such things. Maude has been kind to you. You owe her some tolerance. Why don’t you give up gracefully and go home?”

“Because my sister has been misled. She’s in the hands of fools and knaves. Which are you, Mother?”

“Neither. And Maude is better off than she’s ever been in her life.” But her assurance was failing under his one-track pressure.

“This I desire to see for myself. Where are they?”

“You shan’t find out from me.” She looked at me with an obscure appeal in her eyes.

“Then I’ll find out for myself.”

It wasn’t hard to do. Leonard Lister was in the telephone book. He had an apartment address in Santa Monica, on one of the grid of streets above Lincoln Boulevard. I tried to talk Harlan, an obvious troublemaker, into letting me take it from here. But he was as hot as a cocker with bird scent in his nostrils. I had to let him come, or drop the case. And he’d probably make more trouble by himself.

It was almost dark when we found the place, an old two-story stucco house set back from the street behind a brown patch of lawn. Lister’s apartment was a small studio built over an attached garage. A flight of concrete steps slanted up the outside wall of the garage. There were lights in the house, and behind the blinded windows of the apartment. Under the late twilight stillness, our feet rustled in the dry grass.

“Imagine Maude being reduced to this,” Harlan said. “A woman of exquisite refinement, come to live in a slum with a – a gigolo.”

“Uh-huh. You better let me do the talking. You could get hurt, tossing that language around.”

“No ruffian can intimidate me.”

But he let me go ahead of him up the flight of steps. It was lit by an insect-repellent yellow bulb over the door at the top. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again. Harlan reached past me and turned the knob. The door was locked.

“Pick the lock,” he said in an urgent whisper. “They’re in there lying low, I’m sure of it. You must have skeleton keys?”

“I also have a license to lose.”

He hammered the door till it vibrated in its frame. His seal-ringed knuckle made little dents in the paint. Soft footsteps approached from the other side. I thrust Harlan back with my arm. He almost lost his balance on the narrow landing.

The door opened. “What goes on?”

The man in the doorway wore a striped cotton bathrobe, and nothing else. His shoulders and bare chest were Herculean, a little bowed and softened by his age. He was in his late forties, perhaps. His red hair was shaggy and streaked with gray. His thick mouth gleamed like a bivalve in the red nest of his beard. His eyes were deepset and dreamy, the kind of eyes that watch the past or the future but seldom look directly at the present.

Over the shoulders which nearly filled the doorframe, I could see into the lighted room. It was cramped and meanly furnished with a studio bed, a few chairs. Books spilled from homemade shelves constructed out of red bricks and unfinished boards. In the cubbyhole kitchenette on the far side, a woman was working. I could see her dark head, her slim back with apron strings tied at the waist, and hear dishes rattling.

I told Lister who I was, but he was looking at the man behind me.

“Mr. Harlan, isn’t it? This is quite a surprise. I can’t say it’s a pleasant one.” His voice had the ease that great size gives a man. “Now what do you want, Mr. Harlan?”

“You know perfectly well. My sister.”

Lister stepped out, closing the door behind him. It became very cozy with the three of us on the yard-square landing, like the components of fission coming together. Lister’s bare feet were silent on the concrete. His voice was soft:

“Maude is busy. I’m pretty busy myself. I was just going to take a shower. So my advice to you is, go away. And don’t bother coming back. We’re going to be indefinitely busy.”

“Busy spending her money?” Harlan said.

Lister’s teeth flashed in his beard. His voice took on an edge.

“It’s easy to see why Maude won’t speak to you. Now take your detective friend and remove yourself from my doorstep.”