Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“Lew Archer. I’m sorry I can’t tell you much more than I have.”

“But who are these people? How do we know they exist?”

“Because I say so.”

Hackett said: “You could be angling for a bodyguard job.”

“Guarding bodies isn’t my idea of a decent job. I can give you the name of a good firm if you like.” None of them seemed interested. “Of course you can do as you choose. People generally do.”

Hackett saw that I was getting ready to leave.

“Now don’t rush away, Mr. Archer. I really do appreciate your coming here.” The whisky had humanized him, softening his voice and his perspective. “And I certainly don’t mean to be inhospitable. Have a drink.”

“One was enough, thanks.” But I felt more friendly toward him. “You haven’t had any threatening phone calls? Or letters asking for money?”

Hackett looked at his wife, and they both shook their heads. He said: “May I ask a question? How do you know this-ah-criminal plot is directed against me? – against us?”

“I don’t. But the people involved had a map of your place.”

“This place, or the beach cottage?”

“This place. I thought that was good enough reason to come out here and talk to you.”

“You’re very thoughtful,” Ruth Marburg said. Her voice was pleasant and a little coarse, a blend of Western drawls ranging from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf Coast. Under the sound of money, her voice remembered times when there hadn’t been any. “I think we should pay Mr. Archer for his time.”

Hackett got his wallet out and from the assortment of bills it contained selected a twenty. “This will take care of your time.”

“Thanks, it’s already taken care of.”

“Go ahead, take it,” Mrs. Marburg said. “It’s good clean oil money.”

“No thanks.”

Hackett looked at me in surprise. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had refused a small piece of his money. When I made a move to leave he followed me into the gallery and started to name the artists represented.

“Do you like pictures?”

“Very much.”

But Hackett’s recital bored me. He told me how much each picture cost and how much it was worth now. He said he had made a profit on every picture he’d bought in the past ten years.

“Bully for you.”

He cocked a pale eye at me. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No.”

“That’s good.” But he was peeved. I’d failed to show proper respect for him and his money. “After all, you said that you were interested in paintings. These are some of the most valuable modern paintings in California.”

“You told me.”

“Very well, if you’re not interested.” He turned away, and then came back to me. “One thing I don’t understand. Where does Keith Sebastian come in on all this?”

I told the lie I’d hoped to avoid telling: “I knew Keith worked for one of your companies. I went to him, and he sent me out here.”

“I see.”

Before Hackett saw too much, I got into my car and started for the gate. Lupe followed me in his jeep.

The ducks had not returned to the lake. The frightened mud hens had crossed to the far shore. In the distance they looked like a congregation of mourners.

ON MY WAY BACK into the city I stopped at the Laurel Apartments to see if Davy and Sandy had come back there. The door of Laurel Smith’s apartment was standing partly open. She didn’t answer when I knocked. I listened, and heard the sound of snoring deep inside the place. I guessed that Laurel had drunk herself unconscious.

But when I went in and found her in the bathtub, I saw that she’d been hit by something heavier than alcohol. Her nose was bleeding and swollen; her eyes were puffed shut, her lips cut. The bathtub was dry, except for splashes of blood. Laurel still had on her orange and black housecoat.

I went to the phone and called the police, and asked at the same time for an ambulance. In the minutes before they arrived I gave the place a quick shakedown. The first thing I looked at was the portable television set. Laurel’s account of winning it in a contest had sounded to me like a plant.

I took the back off. Glued to the inside of the cabinet was a plastic-encased bug, a miniature radio transmitter no larger than a pack of cigarettes. I left the bug where it was, and replaced the back of the set.

The other unusual thing I found was a negative fact. Nothing I came across in my hurried search suggested that Laurel Smith had a personal history: no letters or old photographs or documents. I did find, in a purse in a bedroom drawer, a savings bank book with deposits totaling over six thousand dollars, and a dog-eared Social Security card in the name of Laurel Blevins.

The same drawer contained a sparsely populated address-book in which I found two names I recognized: Jacob Belsize, and Mr. and Mrs. Edward Spanner. I made a note of the Spanners’ address, which wasn’t too far from my own apartment in West Los Angeles. Then I put everything back in the drawer and pushed it shut.

I could hear the sound of the police siren rising from Pacific Coast Highway. It was a sound I hated: the howl of disaster in the urban barrens. It climbed Chautauqua and died like a wolf in Elder Street. The ambulance was whining in the distance.

I knew the two policemen who came in. Janowski and Prince were detective-sergeants from the Purdue Street station, men in their late thirties who were proud of their work and good at it. I had to tell them what I was doing there, but I suppressed Sandy’s name. I gave them Davy Spanner’s.

Prince said: “Did Spanner do that?” He jerked his thumb toward the bathroom, where by now two ambulance men were getting Laurel Smith onto a stretcher.

“I doubt it. They were good friends.”

“How good?” Janowski said. He was a homely broad-faced Baltic type with a fair delicate skin.

“She gave him a job when he got out of jail.”

“That’s pretty good friends,” Prince said. “What was he in for?”

“Car theft.”

“So now he’s doing postgraduate work in mayhem.” Prince took crime personally. He was a former Golden Gloves welterweight who could have gone either way in his own life. Like me.

I didn’t argue with them. If they picked up Davy, they’d probably be doing him a favor. And the afternoon was slipping away. I wanted to see the Spanners before it got too late.

We went outside and watched Laurel Smith being lifted into the ambulance. Three or four of the apartment dwellers, all women, had drifted out onto the sidewalk. Laurel was their landlady, and they undoubtedly knew her, but they didn’t come too near. The snoring woman gave off the germs of disaster.

Janowski said to one of the attendants: “How bad is she hurt?”

“It’s hard to say, with head injuries. She has a broken nose, and jaw, maybe a fractured skull. I don’t think it was done with fists.”

“With what?”

“A sap, or a truncheon.”

Prince was questioning the women from the apartment building: none of them had heard or seen a thing. They were quiet and subdued, like birds when a hawk is in the neighborhood.

The ambulance rolled away. The women went into the building. Prince got into the police car and made a report in a low-pitched monotone.

Janowski went back into Laurel’s apartment. I walked up to Los Baños Street for a second look at the house with volcanic rock built into the front. The drapes were still drawn. The Cougar was no longer in the driveway.

I wandered around to the back and found an unblinded sliding glass door. The room inside contained no furniture. I looked around the small back yard. It was overgrown with dry crabgrass, which the rains had failed to revive, and surrounded by a five-foot grapestake fence.