Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“From shame, from the police, from prison.” He flung one arm out, indicating the whole range of human disaster. “I am a man of honor, Mr. Archer. But private honor stands higher with me than public honor. The man was abducting my daughter. She brought him here in the hope of being rescued. Her last hope.”

“I think that’s true. You should have told me this before.”

“I was alarmed, upset. I feared your intentions. Any minute the police were due to arrive.”

“But you had a right to shoot him. It wasn’t even a crime. The crime was his.”

“I didn’t know that then. The truth came out to me gradually. I feared that Ella was involved with him.” His flat black gaze sought my face and rested on it. “However, I did not shoot him, Mr. Archer. I was not even here at the time. I told you that this morning, and you may take my word for it.”

“Was Mrs. Salanda here?”

“No sir, she was not. Why should you ask me that?”

“Donny described the woman who checked in with the dead man. The description fits your wife.”

“Donny was lying. I told him to give a false description of the woman. Apparently he was unequal to the task of inventing one.”

“Can you prove that she was with you?”

“Certainly I can. We had reserved seats at the theatre. Those who sat around us can testify that the seats were not empty. Mrs. Salanda and I, we are not an inconspicuous couple.” He smiled wryly.

“Ella killed him then.”

He neither assented, nor denied it. “I was hoping that you were on my side, my side and Ella’s. Am I wrong?”

“I’ll have to talk to her, before I know myself. Where is she?”

“I do not know, Mr. Archer, sincerely I do not know. She went away this afternoon, after the policemen questioned her. They were suspicious, but we managed to soothe their suspicions. They did not know that she had just come home, from another life, and I did not tell them. Mabel wanted to tell them. I silenced her.” His white teeth clicked together.

“What about Donny?”

“They took him down to the station for questioning. He told them nothing damaging. Donny can appear very stupid when he wishes. He has the reputation of an idiot, but he is not so dumb. Donny has been with me for many years. He has a deep devotion for my daughter. I got him released tonight.”

“You should have taken my advice,” I said, “taken the police into your confidence. Nothing would have happened to you. The dead man was a mobster, and what he was doing amounts to kidnaping. Your daughter was a witness against his boss.”

“She told me that. I am glad that it is true. Ella has not always told me the truth. She has been a hard girl to bring up, without a good mother to set her an example. Where has she been these last six months, Mr. Archer?”

“Singing in a night club in Palm Springs. Her boss was a racketeer.”

“A racketeer?” His mouth and nose screwed up, as if he sniffed the odor of corruption.

“Where she was isn’t important, compared with where she is now. The boss is still after her. He hired me to look for her.”

Salanda regarded me with fear and dislike, as if the odor originated in me. “You let him hire you?”

“It was my best chance of getting out of his place alive. I’m not his boy, if that’s what you mean.”

“You ask me to believe you?”

“I’m telling you. Ella is in danger. As a matter of fact, we all are.” I didn’t tell him about the second black Cadillac. Gino would be driving it, wandering the night roads with a ready gun in his armpit and revenge corroding his heart.

“My daughter is aware of the danger,” he said. “She warned me of it.”

“She must have told you where she was going.”

“No. But she may be at the beach house. The house where Donny lives. I will come with you.”

“You stay here. Keep your doors locked. If any strangers show and start prowling the place, call the police.”

He bolted the door behind me as I went out. Yellow traffic lights cast wan reflections on the asphalt. Streams of cars went by to the north, to the south. To the west, where the sea lay, a great black emptiness opened under the stars. The beach house sat on its white margin, a little over a mile from the motel.

For the second time that day, I knocked on the warped kitchen door. There was light behind it, shining through the cracks. A shadow obscured the light.

“Who is it?” Donny said. Fear or some other emotion had filled his mouth with pebbles.

“You know me, Donny.”

The door groaned on its hinges. He gestured dumbly for me to come in, his face a white blur. When he turned his head, and the light from the living room caught his face, I saw that grief was the emotion that marked it. His eyes were swollen as if he had been crying. More than ever he resembled a dilapidated boy whose growing pains had never paid off in manhood.

“Anybody with you?”

Sounds of movement in the living room answered my question. I brushed him aside and went in. Ella Salanda was bent over an open suitcase on the camp cot. She straightened, her mouth thin, eyes wide and dark. The .38 automatic in her hand gleamed dully under the naked bulb suspended from the ceiling.

“I’m getting out of here,” she said, “and you’re not going to stop me.”

“I’m not sure I want to try. Where are you going, Fern?”

Donny spoke behind me, in his grief-thickened voice: “She’s going away from me. She promised to stay here if I did what she told me. She promised to be my girl–”

“Shut up, stupid.” Her voice cut like a lash, and Donny gasped as if the lash had been laid across his back.

“What did she tell you to do, Donny? Tell me just what you did.”

“When she checked in last night with the fella from Detroit, she made a sign I wasn’t to let on I knew her. Later on she left me a note. She wrote it with a lipstick on a piece of paper towel. I still got it hidden, in the kitchen.”

“What did she write in the note?”

He lingered behind me, fearful of the gun in the girl’s hand, more fearful of her anger.

She said: “Don’t be crazy, Donny. He doesn’t know a thing, not a thing. He can’t do anything to either of us.”

“I don’t care what happens, to me or anybody else,” the anguished voice said behind me. “You’re running out on me, breaking your promise to me. I always knew it was too good to be true. Now I just don’t care any more.”

“I care,” she said. “I care what happens to me.” Her eyes shifted to me, above the unwavering gun. “I won’t stay here. I’ll shoot you if I have to.”

“It shouldn’t be necessary. Put it down, Fern. It’s Bartolomeo’s gun, isn’t it? I found the shells to fit it in his glove compartment.”

“How do you know so much?”

“I talked to Angel.”

“Is he here?” Panic whined in her voice.

“No. I came alone.”

“You better leave the same way then, while you can go under your own power.”

“I’m staying. You need protection, whether you know it or not. And I need information. Donny, go in the kitchen and bring me that note.”

“Don’t do it, Donny. I’m warning you.”

His sneakered feet made soft indecisive sounds. I advanced on the girl, talking quietly and steadily: “You conspired to kill a man, but you don’t have to be afraid. He had it coming. Tell the whole story to the cops, and my guess is they won’t even book you. Hell, you can even become famous. The government wants you as a witness in a tax case.”

“What kind of a case?”

“A tax case against Angel. It’s probably the only kind of rap they can pin on him. You can send him up for the rest of his life like Capone. You’ll be a heroine, Fern.”