Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“You find a use for everything.”

“That is good economics. I often think if I wasn’t what I am, I would make a good economist. Nothing would go to waste.” He paused and dragged his dying old mind back to the subject: “She was here for a couple of months, then she ran out on me, silly girl. I heard last week that she was in Acapulco, and the federal Grand Jury was going to subpoena her. I have tax troubles, Mr. Archer, all my life I have tax troubles. Unfortunately I let Fern help with my books a little bit. She could do me great harm. So I sent Bart to Mexico to bring her back. But I meant no harm to her. I still intend her no harm, even now. A little talk, a little realistic discussion with Fern, that is all that will be necessary. So even the shooting of my good friend Bart serves its purpose. Where did it happen, by the way?”

The question flicked out like a hook on the end of a long line.

“In San Diego,” I said, “at a place near the airport: the Mission Motel.”

He smiled paternally. “Now you are showing good sense.”

Gino came back with a silver-framed photograph in his hand. He handed it to Angel, who passed it on to me. It was a studio portrait, of the kind intended for publicity cheesecake. On a black velvet divan, against an artificial night sky, a young woman reclined in a gossamer robe that was split to show one bent leg. Shadows accentuated the lines of her body and the fine bones in her face. Under the heavy makeup which widened the mouth and darkened the half-closed eyes, I recognized Ella Salanda. The picture was signed in white, in the lower right-hand corner. “To my Angel, with all my love, Fern.”

A sickness assailed me, worse than the sickness induced by Gino’s fists. Angel breathed into my face: “Fern Dee is a stage name. Her real name I never learned. She told me one time that if her family knew where she was they would die of shame.” He chuckled drily. “She will not want them to know that she killed a man.”

I drew away from his charnel-house breath. My guards escorted me out. Gino started to follow, but Angel called him back.

“Don’t wait to hear from me,” the old man said after me. “I expect to hear from you.”

The building stood on a rise in the open desert. It was huge and turreted, like somebody’s idea of a castle in Spain. The last rays of the sun washed its walls in purple light and cast long shadows across its barren acreage. It was surrounded by a ten-foot hurricane fence topped with three strands of barbed wire.

Palm Springs was a clutter of white stones in the distance, diamonded by an occasional light. The dull red sun was balanced like a glowing cigar butt on the rim of the hills above the town. A man with a bulky shoulder harness under his brown suede windbreaker drove me towards it. The sun fell out of sight, and darkness gathered like an impalpable ash on the desert, like a column of blue-gray smoke towering into the sky.

The sky was blue-black and swarming with stars when I got back to Emerald Bay. A black Cadillac followed me out of Palm Springs. I lost it in the winding streets of Pasadena. So far as I could see, I had lost it for good.

The neon Mexican lay peaceful under the stars. A smaller sign at his feet asserted that there was No Vacancy. The lights in the long low stucco buildings behind him shone brightly. The office door was open behind a screen, throwing a barred rectangle of light on the gravel. I stepped into it, and froze.

Behind the registration desk in the office, a woman was avidly reading a magazine. Her shoulders and bosom were massive. Her hair was blond, piled on her head in coroneted braids. There were rings on her fingers, a triple strand of cultured pearls around her thick white throat. She was the woman Donny had described to me.

I pulled the screen door open and said rudely: “Who are you?”

She glanced up, twisting her mouth in a sour grimace. “Well! I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“Sorry. I thought I’d seen you before somewhere.”

“Well, you haven’t.” She looked me over coldly. “What happened to your face, anyway?”

“I had a little plastic surgery done. By an amateur surgeon.”

She clucked disapprovingly. “If you’re looking for a room, we’re full up for the night. I don’t believe I’d rent you a room even if we weren’t. Look at your clothes.”

“Uh-huh. Where’s Mr. Salanda?”

“Is it any business of yours?”

“He wants to see me. I’m doing a job for him.”

“What kind of a job?”

I mimicked her: “Is it any business of yours?” I was irritated. Under her mounds of flesh she had a personality as thin and hard and abrasive as a rasp.

“Watch who you’re getting flip with, sonny boy.” She rose, and her shadow loomed immense across the back door of the room. The magazine fell closed on the desk: it was Teen-age Confessions . “I am Mrs. Salanda. Are you a handyman?”

“A sort of one,” I said. “I’m a garbage collector in the moral field. You look as if you could use me.”

The crack went over her head. “Well, you’re wrong. And I don’t think my husband hired you, either. This is a respectable motel.”

“Uh-huh. Are you Ella’s mother?”

“I should say not. That little snip is no daughter of mine.”

“Her stepmother?”

“Mind your own business. You better get out of here. The police are keeping a close watch on this place tonight, if you’re planning any tricks.”

“Where’s Ella now?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s probably gallivanting off around the countryside. It’s all she’s good for. One day at home in the last six months, that’s a fine record for a young unmarried girl.” Her face was thick and bloated with anger against her stepdaughter. She went on talking blindly, as if she had forgotten me entirely: “I told her father he was an old fool to take her back. How does he know what she’s been up to? I say let the ungrateful filly go and fend for herself.”

“Is that what you say, Mabel?” Salanda had softly opened the door behind her. He came forward into the room, doubly dwarfed by her blond magnitude. “I say if it wasn’t for you, my dear, Ella wouldn’t have been driven away from home in the first place.”

She turned on him in a blubbering rage. He drew himself up tall and reached to snap his fingers under her nose. “Go back into the house. You are a disgrace to women, a disgrace to motherhood.”

“I’m not her mother, thank God.”

“Thank God,” he echoed, shaking his fist at her. She retreated like a schooner under full sail, menaced by a gunboat. The door closed on her. Salanda turned to me:

“I’m sorry, Mr. Archer. I have difficulties with my wife, I am ashamed to say it. I was an imbecile to marry again. I gained a senseless hulk of flesh, and lost my daughter. Old imbecile!” he denounced himself, wagging his great head sadly. “I married in hot blood. Sexual passion has always been my downfall. It runs in my family, this insane hunger for blondeness and stupidity and size.” He spread his arms in a wide and futile embrace on emptiness.

“Forget it.”

“If I could.” He came closer to examine my face. “You are injured, Mr. Archer. Your mouth is damaged. There is blood on your chin.”

“I was in a slight brawl.”

“On my account?”

“On my own. But I think it’s time you leveled with me.”

“Leveled with you?”

“Told me the truth. You knew who was shot last night, and who shot him, and why.”

He touched my arm, with a quick, tentative grace. “I have only one daughter, Mr. Archer, only the one child. It was my duty to defend her, as best I could.”

“Defend her from what?”