Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“Out back in the barn. He has a workshop there, and he’s practically lived there since he was suspended. If I didn’t know he was innocent–” She bit the sentence in half. “I mean, he sits and broods and he won’t see anyone. I’m afraid he’ll lose his mind if he keeps it up. I know he’s drinking.” She added in a whisper: “His father was alcoholic.”

“Unless he’s alcoholic, too, a little drinking won’t hurt him.”

“Oh? Are you a medical man?” Her whole face wrinkled in a hostile smile.

“You know what I am.”

“Yes, and I know how men hang together where drinking is concerned. I know what drinking can do.”

I could feel the hard will underlying her girlish air. “We won’t argue, Mrs. Wrightson. About this letter of yours, did you tell your husband you were writing me?”

“Yes, I did. He didn’t want me to. He said it was a waste of money, and we’re hard up as it is. He said they’re out to get him, and nothing would do any good. We had quite an argument about that letter. I sent it anyway. Alex needs outside help, no matter how much it costs.”

“Fifty a day and expenses.”

“I can pay it, for a few days. We’ve never been able to save out of Alex’s salary, but I have a little savings of my own. I taught music until a few years ago.”

“Piano?”

“Yes.” Her eyes rolled wistfully. “I might have become a concert pianist if I had had the teachers, and the hands. My hands were too small.” She held them up for me to see, tiny but muscular, the knuckles swollen from housework. She said with earnest force: “Thank God Henry inherited his father’s hands. And my talent.”

She rose suddenly, like a puppet jerked by a wire, and went to the closed double doors. “Henry! Are you in there?”

“Yes, Mother,” a boy’s voice answered in monotone.

The mother’s voice lilted back: “You haven’t finished the Debussy, darling. You’ve only practiced two hours.”

“I’m tired.”

“Nonsense, you can’t be tired. Just keep on playing, and you’ll get your second wind.”

She listened at the door in tense expectancy until the showers of notes began to fall. They seemed to refresh her with an almost sexual pleasure. There was a hint of ballet in her movement back to me.

“My son is a genius, you know.” Her voice was bright.

“I don’t doubt it,” I said under the music. “Now I’d like you to tell me all you can about your husband’s – difficulty. Your letter didn’t go into much detail. I understand he’s a captain of detectives, under suspension for alleged violation of the Health and Safety Code. The Police Commission is going to hold a hearing next week, and if the opposition makes it stick, your husband stands to lose his job and pension rights.”

“Yes,” she said, “after twenty-four years of service. Alex was due to retire next year, and they’re cutting him off without a nickel.”

“What are they charging him with?”

“Selling narcotics, can you imagine? When he’s been fighting the drug traffic with all his heart and soul. He hates it, he’s incapable of going into it himself.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like a veteran cop. Do they have any evidence on him?”

“I suppose they have. Fabricated evidence. You’ll have to ask Alex about that – he’s the expert – if he’ll talk to you.”

“I’ll try him in a minute. First, who’s the opposition? Who are ‘they’?”

She wagged her head with a doleful up-from-under look. “Practically everybody in town. You don’t make friends trying to enforce the law in a Godforsaken place like this. Alex has made a lot of enemies.”

“Who, for instance?”

“The sheriff, the district attorney. They both work for the clique – the ranchers and oilmen who keep control of the county so their taxes won’t be raised.” Her voice was buzzing with malice, in grotesque counterpoint with the cool clear piano tones. The combination of the woman and the music was getting on my nerves.

“They started the action, did they?”

She nodded. “They’re behind it. The chief was the one who suspended him officially, but he’s only a figurehead. Alex has been running the department for years, if you want the truth. Chief Shouder had nothing against him. It’s the sheriff who wants to get him. Roy Stark.”

“Is this what your husband says?”

“Ask him yourself. You can go out through the house.”

She crossed to the sliding doors with sudden hummingbird speed, and opened them. The music came louder for a moment, then ended in a discord which was no part of Debussy. The boy at the Baldwin piano turned his head, his fingers still spread on the keys. His hands were enormous, too large for his arms, which protruded thin and white from the T-shirt he wore. He was a nice-looking boy, though there was too much hair on his head, too little flesh on his face. A frown knit his eyebrows in a furry black knot across the bridge of his nose:

“ Please , Mother. You asked me to practice. Now you’re interrupting as usual.”

“It’s just for a second, darling. Remember your manners, now. Stand up and say hello to the gentleman. This is my son, Mr. Archer.”

He stood up, taller than I was, six foot three or four, and said hello. But he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on the window where a surf of light was beating. He stood there chewing his short upper lip as though he couldn’t stand the sight of an adult male. I could see why when his mother took his hand and caressed it, tittering nervously: “Henry is only sixteen. Isn’t he tall? Imagine little me giving birth to a great big fellow like Henry.”

He looked down into her upturned smile with a kind of disgusted resignation. If it hadn’t been for his unfinished face and the harsh lines in hers, they almost could have been father and daughter instead of mother and son. She fawned on him like a kitten. He pushed her away, gently:

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.” His bass was still uncertain. “You’re not a little girl–”

“I’m your little girl,” she said in a falsetto which screeked along my spine. “You’re just embarrassed because you know I’m your girl.”

The boy’s eyes met mine. They were tragic with pain and understanding. I left the room. Mrs. Wrightson’s footsteps pattered after me. Before we were outside, the piano came to life in a plangent chord repeated loudly and violently. The boy began to replay the prelude he had been working on, this time in boogic tempo, with a terrible left hand prowling and growling down in the deep bass.

In the barn, behind the house, a power saw was screeching in sympathy. Mrs. Wrightson knocked on a side door. It was opened by a man in sawdust-sprinkled overalls. For the second time in five minutes, I felt a little short. Wrightson’s thick white hair nearly brushed the top of the doorframe. His eyes were deepset and gray, with a red smoldering in them like the ash of a burning cigar. They looked from me to his wife:

“Who is this, Esther?”

“Mr. Archer.”

“I told you not to send that letter.” He had a freshly cut length of white pine two-by-four in his hand. He smacked it into the palm of his other hand. “Another wasted trip.”

“You need help , Alex.”

He smiled without parting his lips. There was a three or four days’ beard around his mouth. She plucked at her withering throat as if his grizzled silence frightened her. Shifting to the offensive, she leaned towards him and sniffed with flaring nostrils.

“Alex. You’ve been drinking. You shouldn’t use the saw when you’ve been drinking.”

“Shouldn’t I?” He looked up into the sun.