Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“I didn’t. I gave him affection. He needed some, after those years in the orphanage.”

She leaned over and touched her husband’s shoulder, almost as if he and Davy were the same to her.

He rebounded into deeper despair: “We should have left him in the orphanage.”

“You don’t mean that, Edward. The three of us had ten good years.”

“Did we? Hardly a day went by that I didn’t have to use the razor strap on him. If I never heard of Davy again, I’d–”

She touched his mouth. “Don’t say it. You care about him just as much as I do.”

“After what he did to us?”

She looked across him at me. “My husband can’t help feeling bitter. He put a lot of stock in Davy. He was a real good father to him, too. But Davy needed more than we could give him. And when he got into trouble the first time the Holy Brethren of the Immaculate Conception asked Edward to step aside as a lay preacher. That was a terrible blow to him, and with one thing and another we left town and moved here. Then Edward came down with his ulcer, and after that he was out of work for a long time – most of the last three years. Under the circumstances we couldn’t do much for Davy. He was running loose by that time, anyway, running loose and living on his own most of the time.”

Spanner was embarrassed by his wife’s candor: “This is all ancient history.”

“It’s what I came to hear. You say you moved here from another town?”

“We lived most of our lives in Santa Teresa,” she said.

“Do you know a man named Jack Fleischer?”

She looked at her husband. “Isn’t that the name of the man who was here last month?”

I prompted them: “Big man with a bald head? Claims to be a retired policeman.”

“That’s him,” she said. “He asked us a lot of questions about Davy, mainly his background. We told him what little we knew. We got him out of the Santa Teresa Shelter when he was six years old. He didn’t have a last name, and so we gave him ours. I wanted to adopt him, but Edward felt we weren’t up to the responsibility.”

“She means,” Spanner put in, “that if we adopted him the county wouldn’t pay us for his board.”

“But we treated him just like he was our own. We never had any children of our own. And I’ll never forget the first time we saw him in the supervisor’s office at the Shelter. He came right over to us and stood beside Edward and wouldn’t go away. ‘I want to stand beside the man,’ was what he said. You remember, Edward.”

He remembered. There was sorrowful pride in his eyes.

“Now he stands as tall as you do. I wish you’d seen him today.”

She was quite a woman, I thought: trying to create a family out of a runaway boy and a reluctant husband, a wholeness out of disappointed lives.

“Do you know who his real parents were, Mrs. Spanner?”

“No, he was just an orphan. Some fieldworker died and left him in the tules. I found that out from the other man – Fleischer.”

“Did Fleischer say why he was interested in Davy?”

“I didn’t ask him. I was afraid to ask, with Davy on probation and all.” She hesitated, peering into my face. “Do you mind if I ask you the same question?”

Spanner answered for me: “Mrs. Laurel Smith got beat up. I told you that.”

Her eyes widened. “Davy wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Smith. She was the best friend he had.”

“I don’t know what he’d do,” Spanner said morosely. “Remember he hit a high-school teacher and that was the beginning of all our trouble.”

“Was it a woman teacher?” I said.

“No, it was a man. Mr. Langston at the high school. There’s one thing you can’t get away with, and that’s hitting a teacher. They wouldn’t let him back in school after that. We didn’t know what to do with him. He couldn’t get a job. It’s one reason we moved down here. Nothing went right for us after that.” He spoke of the move as if it had been a banishment.

“There was more to it than hitting a teacher,” his wife said. “Henry Langston wasn’t a teacher really. He was what they call a counselor. He was trying to counsel Davy when it happened.”

“Counsel him on what?”

“I never did get that clear.”

Spanner turned to her: “Davy has mental trouble. You never faced up to that. But it’s time you did. He had mental trouble from the time we took him out of the Shelter. He never warmed up to me. He was never a normal boy.”

Slowly she wagged her head from side to side in stubborn negation. “I don’t believe it.”

Their argument had evidently been going on for years. Probably it would last as long as they did. I interrupted it: “You saw him today, Mrs. Spanner. Did he seem to have trouble on his mind?”

“Well, he’s never cheerful. And he seemed to be pretty tense. Any young man is, these days, when he’s getting ready to marry.”

“Were they serious about getting married?”

“I’d say very serious. They could hardly wait.” She turned to her husband: “I didn’t mean to tell you this, but I guess it should all come out. Davy thought that maybe you would marry them. I explained you had no legal right, being just a lay preacher.”

“I wouldn’t marry him to anybody, anyway. I’ve got too much respect for the race of females.”

“Did they say anything more about their plans, Mrs. Spanner? Where did they plan to get married?”

“They didn’t say.”

“And you don’t know where they went after they left here?”

“No, I don’t.” But her eyes seemed to focus inward, as if she was remembering something.

“Didn’t they give you some inkling?”

She hesitated. “You never answered my question. Why are you so interested? You don’t really think he beat up Mrs. Smith?”

“No. But people are always surprising me.”

She studied my face, leaning her elbows on the table. “You don’t talk like a policeman. Are you one?”

“I used to be. I’m a private detective now – I’m not trying to pin anything on Davy.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“Make sure the girl is safe. Her father hired me for that. She’s only seventeen. She should have been in school today, not bucketing around the countryside.”

No matter how unrewarding their own married lives may be, women seem to love the idea of weddings. Mrs. Spanner’s wedding dream died hard. I watched it die.

“When I was out here in the kitchen making tea for them,” she said, “I heard them talking in the living room. They were reading the wall mottoes out loud and making fun of them. That wasn’t very nice, but maybe I shouldn’t have been listening to them. Anyway, they made a joke about the Unseen Guest. Davy said that Daddy Warbucks was going to have an unseen guest tonight.”

Spanner exploded: “That’s blasphemy!”

“Was anything else said on the subject?”

“He asked the girl was she sure she could get him in. She said it would be easy, Louis knew her.”

“Louis?” I said. “Or Lupe?”

“It could have been Lupe. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was. Do you know who they were talking about?”

“I’m afraid I do. May I use your telephone?”

“Long as it isn’t long distance,” Spanner said prudently.

I gave him a dollar and called the Hacketts’ number in Malibu. A woman’s voice which I didn’t recognize at first answered the phone. I said:

“Is Stephen Hackett there?”

“Who is calling, please?”

“Lew Archer. Is that Mrs. Marburg?”

“It is.” Her voice was thin and dry. “You were a good prophet, Mr. Archer.”

“Has something happened to your son?”

“You’re such a good prophet I wonder if it’s prophecy. Where are you?”