Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

“Which is why you didn’t identify his body.”

“That’s right.”

“And you let Jean go on thinking her father was alive, and go on looking for him.”

“It made her feel better,” he said. “She never found out how he died.”

“Who shot him?”

“I don’t know. Honest to God. I only know I didn’t.”

“You mentioned a snatch.”

“That’s right. It’s where him and I parted company. I admit I been a thief in my time, but strong-arm stuff was never for me. When he started to plan this snatch, I backed out on him.” Shepherd added meditatively: “When Swain came back from Mexico in 1954, he wasn’t the man he used to was. I think he went a little crazy down there.”

“Did Swain kidnap Nick Chalmers?”

“That’s the one he was talking about. I never saw the boy myself. I was long gone when it happened. And it never came out in the papers. I guess the parents hushed it up.”

“Why would a man with half a million dollars attempt a kidnapping?”

“Ask me another. Swain kept changing his story. Sometimes he claimed he had the half million, sometimes he said he didn’t. Sometimes he claimed he had it and lost it. He said once he was highjacked by a border guard. His wildest story was the one about Mr. Rawlinson. Mr. Rawlinson was the president of the bank that Eldon Swain worked for, and he claimed Mr. Rawlinson took the money and framed him for it.”

“Could that have happened?”

“I don’t see how. Mr. Rawlinson wouldn’t ruin his own bank. And he’s been on his uppers ever since. I know that for certain because I got a relative works for him.”

“Your ex-wife.”

“You get around,” he said in some surprise. “Did you talk to her?”

“A little.”

He leaned toward me, keenly interested. “What did she say about me?”

“We didn’t discuss you.”

Shepherd seemed disappointed, as if he had been robbed of a dimension. “I see her from time to time. I bear no grudges, even if she did divorce me when I was in the pen. I was kind of glad to make the break,” he said dolefully. “She’s got mixed blood, you probably noticed that. It kind of hurt my pride to be married to her.”

“We were talking about the money,” I reminded him. “You’re pretty certain that Swain took it and kept it.”

“I know he did. He had it with him at Conchita’s place. This was right after he lifted it.”

“You saw it?”

“I know somebody who did.”

“Your daughter?”

“No.” He added with a touch of belligerence: “Leave my daughter out of this. She’s going straight.”

“Where?”

“Mexico. She went to Mexico with him and never came back from there.” His answer sounded a little glib, and I wondered if it was true.

“Why did Swain come back?”

“He always planned to, that’s my theory. He left the money buried on this side of the border, he told me so himself more than once. He offered me a share of it if I would go partners with him and drive him around and grubstake him. Like I said, he wasn’t in very good shape when he came back. Fact is, he needed a keeper.”

“And you were his keeper?”

“That’s right. I owed him something. He was a pretty good man at one time, Eldon Swain was. When I hit the pavement the first time, on parole, he took me on as a gardener at his place in San Marino. It was a real showplace. I used to grow him roses as big as dahlias. It’s a terrible thing when a man like that ends up dead of lead poisoning in a railroad yard.”

“Did you drive Swain to Pacific Point in 1954?”

“I admit that much. But that was before he started to talk about snatching the boy. I wouldn’t drive him on that caper. I got out of town in a hurry. I wanted no part–”

“You didn’t shoot him before you left, by any chance?”

He gave me a shocked look. “No sir. You don’t know much about me, mister. I’m not a man of violence. I specialize in staying out of trouble, out of jail. And I’m still working at it.”

“What were you sent up for?”

“Car theft. Break and enter. But I never carried a gun.”

“Maybe somebody else shot Swain and you burned off his fingerprints.”

“That’s crazy. Why would I do that?”

“So that you wouldn’t be traced through him. Let’s say you took the ransom money from Swain.”

“What ransom money? I never saw any ransom money. I was back here on the border by the time he took the boy.”

“Was Eldon Swain a child molester?”

Shepherd squinted at the sky. “Could be. He always liked ’em young, and the older he got the younger he liked ’em. Sex was always his downfall.”

I didn’t believe Shepherd. I didn’t disbelieve him. The mind that looked at me through his eyes was like muddy water continually stirred by fears and fantasies and greeds. He was growing old in the desperate hope of money, and by now he was willing to become whatever the hope suggested.

“Where are you going now, Randy? To Mexico?”

He was quiet for a moment, peering out across the flatland toward the sun, which was halfway down the west. A Navy jet flew over like a swallow towing the noises of a freight train. Shepherd watched it out of sight, as if it represented his last disappearing luck.

“I better not tell you where I’m going, mister. If we need to get in touch again I’ll get in touch with you. Just don’t try to pull a fast one on me. So you saw me at Miss Jean’s house. That puts you on the same spot.”

“Not quite. But I won’t turn you in unless I find some reason.”

“You won’t. I’m as clean as soap. And you’re a white man,” he added, sharing with me his one dubious distinction. “How about a little traveling money?”

I gave him fifty dollars and my name, and he seemed satisfied. He got out of the car with his bedroll and stood waiting by the roadside until I lost sight of him in my rear-view mirror.

I drove back to the cabins and found Mrs. Williams still working in the one that Shepherd had vacated. When I appeared in the doorway, she looked up from her sweeping with pleased surprise.

“I never thought you’d come back,” she said. “I guess you didn’t find him, eh?”

“I found him. We had a talk.”

“Randy’s a great talker.”

She was stalling, unwilling to ask me outright for the second installment of her money. I gave her the other fifty. She held it daintily in her fingers, as if she had captured some rare specimen of moth or butterfly, then tucked it away in her bosom.

“I thank you kindly. I can use this money. I guess you know how it is.”

“I guess I do. Are you willing to help me with more information, Mrs. Williams?”

She smiled. “I’ll tell you anything but my age.”

She sat down on the stripped mattress of the bed, which creaked and sank under her weight. I took the only chair in the room. A shaft of sunlight fell through the window, swarming with brilliant dust. It laid down a swatch of brightness between us on the worn linoleum floor.

“What do you want to know?”

“How long has Shepherd been staying here?”

“Off and on since the war. He comes and he goes. When he got really hungry he used to travel with the fruit pickers sometimes. Or he’d pick up a dollar or two weeding somebody’s garden. He was a gardener at one time.”

“He told me that. He worked for a Mr. Swain in San Marino. Did he ever mention Eldon Swain to you?”

The question made her unhappy. She looked down at her knee and began pleating her skirt. “You want me to tell it like it is, like the kids say?”

“Please do.”

“It don’t make me look good. The trouble is in this business you get so you’ll do things for money that you wouldn’t start out doing when you’re young and fresh. There’s nothing people won’t do for money.”