Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

Before he opened the gate he made me show him the photostat of my license. “Okay, man. I guess it’s okay.”

He unlocked the gate and let me drive in, relocked it as I waited behind his jeep.

“Is Mr. Hackett here yet?”

He shook his head, got into his jeep, and led me up the private blacktop road. Once we had rounded the first curve, the place seemed almost as remote and untouched as backcountry. Quail were calling in the brush, and smaller birds were eating the red berries off the toyon. A couple of soaring vultures balanced high on a thermal were keeping an eye on things.

The road mounted a low pass and ran along the crest of the wide earth dam which held back the water of the artificial lake. There were ducks on the water, pintails and cinnamon teal, and mud hens in the grass around its shore.

My escort drew his revolver and, without stopping his jeep, shot the nearest mud hen. I think he was showing off to me. All the ducks flew up, and all the mud hens but one ran like hell into the water, like little animated cartoons of terrified people.

The house was on a rise at the far end of the lake. It was wide and low and handsome, and it fitted the landscape so well that it looked like a piece of it.

Mrs. Hackett was waiting on the terrace in front of the house. She had on a brown wool suit, and her long yellow hair was done up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She was in her early thirties, pretty and plump and very fair. She called out angrily to the man in the jeep: “Was it you who fired that gun?”

“I shot a mud hen.”

“I’ve asked you not to do that. It drives away the ducks.”

“There’s too many mud hens.”

She went pale. “Don’t talk back to me, Lupe.”

They glared at each other. His face was like carved saddle leather. Hers was like Dresden porcelain. Apparently the porcelain won. Lupe drove away in the jeep and disappeared into one of the outbuildings.

I introduced myself. The woman turned to me, but Lupe was still on her mind. “He’s insubordinate. I don’t know how to handle him. I’ve been in this country for over ten years and I still don’t understand Americans.” Her accent was Middle European, probably Austrian or German.

“I’ve been here for over forty,” I said, “and I don’t understand Americans, either. Spanish-Americans are particularly hard to understand.”

“I’m afraid you’re not much help.” She smiled, and made a small helpless gesture with her fairly wide shoulders.

“What’s Lupe’s job?”

“He looks after the place.”

“Singlehanded?”

“It isn’t as much work as you might think. We have a bonded maintenance service for the house and grounds. My husband dislikes to have servants underfoot. I miss having servants myself, we always had servants at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Bayerne,” she said with heavy nostalgia. “Near München. My family has lived in the same house since the time of Napoleon.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Ten years. Stephen brought me to this country ten years ago. I’m still not used to it. In Germany the servant classes treat us with respect.”

“Lupe doesn’t act like a typical servant.”

“No, and he isn’t typical. My mother-in-law insisted that we hire him. He knows that.” She sounded like a woman who needed someone to talk to. She must have heard herself. “I’m afraid I’m talking too much. But why are you asking me these questions?”

“It’s a habit of mine. I’m a private detective.”

Her eyes blurred with apprehension. “Has Stephen had an accident? Is that why he hasn’t come home?”

“I hope not.”

She looked at me accusingly. I was the messenger who brought bad news.

“You said on the telephone you were a friend of Keith Sebastian’s.”

“I know him.”

“Has something happened to my husband? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No. I suppose I’d better tell you why I’m here. May I sit down?”

“Of course. But come inside. It’s getting cold out here in the wind.”

She led me through a glass door, up a short flight of steps, and along a well-lit gallery hung with pictures. I recognized a Klee and a Kokoschka and a Picasso, and thought it was no wonder the place had a fence around it.

The living room commanded a broad view of the sea, which seemed from this height to slant up to the horizon. A few white sails clung to it like moths on a blue window.

Mrs. Hackett made me sit in an austere-looking steel-and-leather chair which turned out to be comfortable.

“Bauhaus,” she said instructively. “Would you like a drink? Benedictine?”

She got a stone bottle and glasses out of a portable bar and poured small drinks for us. Then sat down confidentially with her round silk knees almost touching mine. “Now what is all this business?”

I told her that in the course of an investigation which I didn’t specify, I’d stumbled on a couple of facts. Taken together they suggested that she and her husband might be in danger of robbery or extortion.

“Danger from whom?”

“I can’t name names. But I think you’d be well advised to have the place guarded.”

My advice was punctuated by a distant sound that resembled machine-gun fire. Hackett’s red sports car came into view and scooted around the lake toward the house.

“Ach!” Mrs. Hackett said. “He’s brought his mother with him.”

“Doesn’t she live here?”

“Ruth lives in Bel-Air. We are not enemies but neither are we friends. She is too close to Stephen. Her husband is younger than Stephen.”

I seemed to have won Mrs. Hackett’s confidence, and wondered if I really wanted it. She was handsome but a little fat and dull, and full of unpredictable emotions.

Her husband had stopped below the terrace and was helping his mother out of the car. She looked about his age, and dressed it. But if Hackett was forty, his mother had to be at least fifty-six or seven. As she came across the terrace on his arm, I could see the years accumulate behind her youthful façade.

Mrs. Hackett went to the window and waved at them rather lifelessly. The sight of her husband’s mother seemed to drain her of energy.

The mother was introduced to me as Mrs. Marburg. She looked at me with the arithmetical eye of an aging professional beauty: would I be viable in bed?

Her son’s eye was equally cold and calculating, but he was interested in other questions: “Didn’t I see you in Keith Sebastian’s office?”

“Yes.”

“And you followed me out here? Why? I see you’ve made yourself cozy.”

He meant the glasses on the coffee table. His wife flushed guiltily. His mother said in chiding coquetry: “I know you have a passion for privacy, Stephen. But don’t be nasty, now. I’m sure the nice man has a very good explanation.”

She reached for his hand. Hackett winced away from her touch, but it seemed to ground some of his static. He said in a more reasonable tone: “What is your explanation?”

“It was Sebastian’s idea.” I sat down and repeated the story I’d told his wife.

It seemed to upset all three of them. Hackett got a bottle of bourbon out of the portable bar and, without offering any of it around, poured himself a solid slug which he knocked back.

His German wife began to weep, without any sound, and then her hair came loose and flooded her shoulders. Hackett’s mother sat down beside his wife and patted her broad back with one hand. The other hand plucked at her own throat where crepe had gathered in memory of her youth.

“It would help,” Mrs. Marburg said to me, “if you’d lay out all the facts for us. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.”