Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“Do you feel like naming them?”

“If you can bear to listen.” She sat quiet for a minute,ordering her thoughts. “I don’t really want to talk it out at any length. This isn’t the time, and I doubt that you’re the person.”

“Who is?”

“Keith should be. He’s still my husband. The trouble is we stopped talking years ago. We started a game of let’s pretend, without ever admitting it to each other. Keith was to be the rising young executive and I was to be his model homemaker, making him feel like a man, which is hard for Keith. And Sandy was to make us both feel good by doing well in school and never doing or saying anything wrong. What that boils down to is exploitation. Keith and I were exploiting each other and Sandy, and that’s the opposite of loving each other.”

“I still say you’re a good girl.”

“Don’t try to make me feel better. I have no right to.”

But she closed her eyes and leaned her face toward me. I held it between my hands. I could feel her mouth and her breathing warm on my fingers.

After a while she straightened up. Her face was more composed. It had recovered some of the pride that made it beautiful.

She said: “Are you hungry? Let me fix you something to eat.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“You said it yourself just now. People shouldn’t play let’s pretend.”

“Is that what I’d be doing?”

“That’s what I’d be doing, Bernice. There’s something else we should be doing.”

She misunderstood me, and gave me a quick-frozen quizzical look. “Really?”

“That wasn’t a pass. But I have to ask you a question that may embarrass you. It has to do with Sandy’s sex experience.”

She was startled. She stood up and walked away from me, to the far side of the room.

“How much did your daughter know about sex?”

Slowly, she turned to face me. “I haven’t the faintest idea. We never discussed the matter.”

“Why not?”

“I assumed she learned all about it in school. She took a course on the subject. Anyway, I didn’t feel qualified.”

“Why.”

She looked at me angrily. “I don’t know why you’re insisting on this catechism. It has nothing to do with anything.”

“People are always telling me that about their central concerns.”

“Sex is not one of my central concerns. I can take it or leave it. Keith and I–” She heard herself, and paused.

“What about you and Keith?”

“Nothing. You have no right to ask me these questions.”

I moved toward her. “Tell me one thing. What happened to Sandy last summer – the incident you’ve been suppressing in her diary?

“It hardly matters any more.”

“Everything matters.”

She looked at me with a kind of incredulity. “You really believe that, don’t you? I never met a man like you before.”

“Let’s not get off on the personal. Did she write about her LSD experience?”

“That was part of it. Incidentally, I forgot to tell you, the doctor left a message for you. The substance you gave him for analysis was LSD of a poor quality. He said that helped to account for Sandy’s reaction.”

“I’m not surprised. What else helped to account for it?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’m asking you, Bernice. What was the rest of it?”

Her face darkened. “I can’t tell you. Honestly I can’t.”

“If Sandy could do it or have it done to her, you should be able to say it. Are we talking about her sexual relations with Lupe?”

She bowed her head. “There were more than one of them: They took turns at her, doing – different things.”

“And she spelled this out in her diary?”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“I destroyed it. Honestly. I was so terribly ashamed.”

“Why do you suppose she wrote it out?”

“To shame me. She knew I read her diary.”

“Don’t you think she may have been asking you for help?”

“I don’t know. It came as such a shock, I couldn’t think clearly about it. I still can’t.” Her voice was hurried and monotonous, with a shrill note of panic running through it.

“Why, Bernice?” I wondered if the same sort of thing had ever happened to her.

She raised her head and looked at me with black dislike. “I don’t want to talk to you any more. Go away.”

“Promise me one thing first. Let me know when you hear from Keith. All I want is a chance to talk to him and Sandy.”

“I’ll call you. I promise that much.”

I told her I would wait for her call in my office, and went outside. Late afternoon sunlight spilled over the mountains to the west. The light had a tarnished elegiac quality, as if the sinking sun might never rise again. On the fairway behind the house the golfers seemed to be hurrying, pursued by their lengthening shadows.

I BOUGHT A plastic basket of fried chicken and took it my office. Before eating it, I checked in with my answering service. The girl on the switchboard told me I’d had a call from Ralph Cuddy.

I called the Santa Monica number that Cuddy had left for me. He answered the phone himself:

“Good evening. This is Ralph Cuddy.”

“Archer here. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again.”

“Mrs. Krug asked me to call you.” His voice was stiff with embarrassment. “I told her Jasper was dead. She wants to talk to you about it.”

“Tell her I’ll get in touch with her tomorrow.”

“Tonight would be better. Mrs. Krug is very anxious to see you. You know that missing gun you were asking me about? She has some information on that, too.”

“How could she have?”

“Mr. Krug was security chief at Corpus Christi Oil at the time the gun was stolen.”

“Who stole it? Jasper Blevins?”

“I’m not authorized to tell you anything. You better get it direct from Mrs. Krug.”

I drove through heavy early-evening traffic to the Oakwood Convalescent Home. As the nurse conducted me down the corridor, I got a whiff of some patient’s dinner. It reminded me of the chicken I had left untouched on my desk.

Alma Krug looked up from her Bible when I entered the room. Her eyes were grave. She dismissed the nurse with a movement of her hand.

“Please shut the door,” she said to me. “It’s good of you to visit me, Mr. Archer.” She indicated a straight chair, which I took, and turned her wheel chair to face me. “Ralph Cuddy says my grandson Jasper was killed in a train wreck. Is that true?”

“His body was found under a train. I’ve been told he was murdered somewhere else, and that Laurel did the killing. That’s hearsay evidence, but I’m inclined to believe it.”

“Has Laurel been punished?”

“Not directly and not immediately. The local sheriff’s man covered up for her, or so I’m told. But Laurel was killed herself the other day.”

“Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is terrible news.” Her voice had a rustling sibilance. “You say that Laurel was killed the other day. You didn’t tell me that when you came to see me before.”

“No.”

“And you didn’t tell me Jasper was dead.”

“I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to hurt you unnecessarily.”

“You should have told me. How long ago did he die?”

“About fifteen years. Actually his body was found on the tracks near Rodeo City in late May of 1952.”

“A bad end,” she said.

“Other bad things have happened.” I went on slowly and carefully, watching her face. “Three or four days before Jasper was killed, Mark Hackett was shot on Malibu Beach. Perhaps we’ve both been holding back, Mrs. Krug. You didn’t tell me your husband was security officer for Mark Hackett’s oil company. I admit I should have been able to work it out for myself, but for some reason I didn’t. I think you’re the reason.”