Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“You can’t stay up forever and do everything yourself. This could turn into a long siege. And it could end badly.”

She leaned sideways toward me. “Is Stephen dead?”

“We have to face that possibility. Spanner isn’t playing games. He’s homicidal, apparently.”

“How do you know that?” She was angry. “You’re trying to frighten me, aren’t you? So I’ll cooperate with the police.”

“I’m giving you the facts, so you can make a good decision. In the course of the night Spanner laid your son out across a railroad track. He intended to let a freight train run over him.”

She looked at me in astonishment. “A freight train?”

“I know it sounds wild, but it happened. The girl saw it happen. She got scared and ran out on Spanner at that point, which makes it fairly certain she isn’t lying.”

“What happened to Stephen?”

“Spanner changed his mind when the girl got away. But he could try it again. There’s a lot of railroad track in California and freight trains are running all the time.”

“What is he trying to do to us?”

“I doubt that he could tell you if you asked him. He seems to be acting out a childhood memory.”

“That sounds like phony psychology to me.”

“It isn’t, though. I’ve talked to Davy Spanner’s high-school counselor in Santa Teresa. His father was killed by a train at that same spot, when he was three. Davy saw it happen.”

“Where is the place?”

“In the northern part of Santa Teresa County, near Rodeo City.”

“I’m not familiar with that territory.”

“Neither am I. Of course they may be hundreds of miles away from there by now. In northern California or out of the state in Nevada or Arizona.”

She pushed my words away as if they were flies buzzing around her head. “You are trying to frighten me.”

“I wish I could, Mrs. Marburg. You have nothing to gain by keeping this business private. I can’t find your son by myself, I don’t have the leads. The leads I do have should go to the police.”

“I haven’t had good luck with the local police.”

“You mean in the death of your husband?”

“Yes.” She gave me a level look. “Who’s been talking?”

“Not you. I think you should. The murder of your husband and the taking of your son may be connected.”

“I don’t see how they could be. The Spanner boy couldn’t have been more than four or five when Mark Hackett was killed.”

“How was he killed?”

“He was shot on the beach.” She rubbed her temple as if her husband’s death had left a permanent sore spot in her mind.

“Malibu Beach?”

“Yes. We have a beach cottage, and Mark often went for an evening stroll down there. Someone came up behind him and shot him in the head with a handgun. The police arrested a dozen or more suspects – mostly transients and beach bums – but they never got enough evidence to lay charges.”

“Was he robbed?”

“His wallet was taken. They never recovered it either. You can see why I’m not a great admirer of the local police.”

“Still they have their uses, and they’re coming out here anyway. I need your permission to talk to them, freely.”

She sat still and solemn. I could hear her breathing, measuring out the slow seconds.

“I have to take your advice, don’t I? If Stephen was killed because I decided wrong, I couldn’t live with it. Go ahead, Mr. Archer, do what you want to do.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, then called me back from the door. “I want you to stay with it, of course.”

“I was hoping you would.”

“If you do find Stephen yourself, and bring him home safely, I’m still prepared to pay you a hundred thousand. Do you need money for expenses, now?”

“It would help. I’m co-opting another man, a San Francisco detective named Willie Mackey. Do you want to advance me a thousand?”

“I’ll write you a check. Where’s my bag?” She raised her voice and called: “Sidney! Where’s my bag?”

Her husband came from the adjoining room. He was wearing a paint-daubed smock and had a spot of red paint on his nose. His eyes looked through us as if we were transparent.

“What is it?” he said impatiently.

“I want you to find my bag.”

“Find it yourself. I’m working.”

“Don’t use that tone on me.”

“I wasn’t aware of any particular tone.”

“We won’t argue. Go and find my bag. It will do you no harm to do something useful for a change.”

“Painting is useful.”

She half-rose from the long chair. “I said we wouldn’t argue. Get my bag. I think I left it in the library.”

“All right, if you want to make a major issue out of it.”

He went and got her bag, and she wrote me a check for a thousand dollars. Marburg went back to his painting.

Then two deputies arrived from the sheriff’s office, and Mrs. Marburg and I talked to them in the main living room. Dr. Converse stood listening just inside the door, his clever glance moving from face to face.

Later I talked to an officer of the highway patrol, and after that to a sheriff’s captain named Aubrey. He was a big middle-aged man with a big man’s easy confidence. I liked him. Dr. Converse was gone by this time, and with a single exception I held nothing back from Aubrey.

The single exception was the Fleischer angle. Jack Fleischer was a recently retired officer of the law, and officers of the law tend to hang together protectively in a pinch. I felt that Fleischer’s role in the case should be investigated by free lances like me and Willie Mackey.

To keep everything even, I stopped by the Purdue Street station on my way into town. Detective-Sergeant Prince was in a rage so black that his partner Janowski was worried about him. Laurel Smith had died during the night.

I CLIMBED THE STAIRS to my second-floor office on knees that shook under me. It was a few minutes past ten by the wall clock. I called my answering service. A few minutes before ten, Willie Mackey had called me from San Francisco. I returned the call now, and got Willie in his Geary Street office.

“Nice timing, Lew. I was just trying to phone you. Your man Fleischer checked in at the Sandman about 3 a.m. I put a man on him and made a deal with the night keyboy. The keyboy handles the switchboard after midnight. Fleischer left a call for seven thirty and as soon as he got up he phoned a certain Albert Blevins at the Bowman Hotel. That’s in the Mission District. Fleischer came up to the city and he and Blevins had breakfast together in a cafeteria on Fifth Street. Then they went back to Blevins’s hotel and apparently they’re still there, in his room. Does all this mean anything to you?”

“The name Blevins does.” It was the name on Laurel’s Social Security card. “Find out what you can about him, will you, and meet me at San Francisco Airport?”

“What time?”

I got a plane schedule out of my desk. “One o’clock, in the bar.”

I made an airline reservation and drove out to Los Angeles International. It was a clear bright day at both ends of the flight. When my jet came down over San Francisco Bay I could see the city standing up like a perpendicular dream and past it to the curved dark blue horizon. The endless roofs of the bedroom towns stretched southward along the Peninsula farther than I could see.

I found Willie in the airport bar drinking a Gibson. He was a smart experienced man who copied his style of life from the flamboyant San Francisco lawyers who often employed him. Willie spent his money on women and clothes, and always looked a little overdressed, as he did now. His gray hair had once been black. His very sharp black eyes hadn’t changed in the twenty years I’d known him.