Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

Her eyes flinched. “I have a lot on my conscience. It’s why I asked you to come here, Mr. Archer. The still small voice wouldn’t let me rest, and now that my grandson Jasper’s dead–” She let the sentence trail off into silence.

“Did Jasper steal the gun from Hackett’s company?”

“Joe always thought so. Jasper had stolen before – I had to lock up my purse when he was with us. And he visited Joe at the office that same day.”

“The day Mark Hackett was killed?”

She nodded very slowly. “The day before that he had a terrible quarrel with Mr. Hackett.”

“How do you know?”

“He told Joe. He wanted Joe to intercede for him with Mr. Hackett.”

“What was the problem?”

“Money. Jasper thought he had a legitimate claim on Mr. Hackett, for raising the boy. Actually Mr. Hackett gave Jasper a good deal of money at the time he married Laurel. That was all part of the bargain.”

“Are you telling me that Davy was Mark Hackett’s illegitimate son?”

“His grandson,” she corrected me soberly. “Davy was Stephen Hackett’s natural son. Laurel Dudney was one of the Hacketts’ servants back in Texas. She was a pretty little thing, and Stephen got her with child. His father sent him off to study in Europe. He sent Laurel out to us, to find a husband before she got too big.

“Jasper decided to marry her himself. He was barbering at the time, and he hardly made enough to keep body and soul together. Mr. Hackett gave them five thousand dollars for a wedding present. Later, Jasper thought he should get more. He was badgering Mr. Hackett the day before–” Her precise mouth closed without completing the sentence.

“The day before he killed him?”

“That’s what Joe always thought. It shortened my husband’s life. Joe was an honest man, but he couldn’t bring himself to accuse his own daughter’s son. He asked me if he should, and I told him not to. That’s on my conscience, too.”

“You did what most grandparents would do.”

“That isn’t good enough. But we were in the habit of making excuses for Jasper. From the time that he was a little boy and first came to us, he was a Tartar. He stole and fought and tortured cats and got in trouble at school. I took him to a head doctor once and the doctor said he should be sent away. But I couldn’t bear to do that to him, the poor boy wasn’t all bad.” She added after some thought: “He had some artistic talent. He got that from his mother.”

“Tell me about his mother.”

Mrs. Krug was confused for a moment. She looked at me with displeasure. “I prefer not to talk about my daughter. I have some right to the privacy of my feelings.”

“I already have some facts, Mrs. Krug. Your daughter was born in 1910 in Rodeo City. Oddly enough, I have a copy of her birth certificate. She was christened Henrietta R. Krug. You called her Etta, but at some point in her life she dropped that name.”

“She always hated it. She started using her middle name after she left Albert Blevins.”

“Her middle name is Ruth, isn’t it?”

The old woman bowed her head in assent. Her eyes refused to meet mine.

“And her second husband was Mark Hackett.”

“There was another one in between,” she said with an old woman’s passion for accuracy. “She took up with a Mexican boy from San Diego. That was over twenty-five years ago.”

“What was his name?”

“Lupe Rivera. They only stayed together a few months. The police arrested him for smuggling, and Etta got a divorce from him. Then came Mark Hackett. Then came Sidney Marburg.” Her voice rang harshly, as if she was reciting an indictment.

“Why didn’t you tell me Ruth Marburg was your daughter?”

“You didn’t ask me. It makes no difference, anyway. I haven’t had much to do with Etta since she threw herself at Mr. Hackett and rose in the world and became a great lady. She never comes to see me, and I know why. She’s ashamed of the life she leads, with young men half her age. I might as well not have a family. I never even see my grandson Stephen.”

I said I was sorry, and left her warming her hands at her Bible.

I DROVE TO MALIBU, forgetting that I was hungry and tired. Just before I reached the Hacketts’ gate, I passed a car going in the other direction. The man at the wheel looked like Keith Sebastian. I turned in the entrance to the Hacketts’ driveway and chased him down the hill.

I caught him at the highway STOP sign. He turned right on the highway and then left on a secondary road that looped down along the beach. He parked behind a lighted beach house and knocked on the back door. For an instant, as she opened the door for him, his daughter was silhouetted against the light.

I got out of my car and approached the house. The blinds and drapes were closed. A good deal of light leaked out but I couldn’t hear anything because of the waves marking time on the beach.

The name on the mailbox was Hackett. I knocked on the back door, trying the knob at the same time. It was locked.

Keith Sebastian said through the door: “Who is it?”

“Archer.”

There was another wait. Inside the house a door closed. Sebastian unlocked the outer door and opened it.

I stepped in past him without waiting to be asked. “What are you doing, Keith?”

He had no decent cover story. “I decided I better get away from it all for a day or two. Mr. Hackett loaned me the use of his private cottage.”

I moved from the kitchen into the next room. There were dirty dishes, set for two, on a round poker table. One of the coffee mugs had a half-moon of lipstick at the rim.

“Do you have a girl with you?”

“As a matter of fact I have.” He looked at me with hopeful foolish guile. “You won’t tell Bernice now, will you?”

“She knows, and so do I. It’s Sandy, isn’t it?”

He picked up Sandy’s coffee mug. For a moment his face was open. I think he was planning to brain me, and I stepped back out of close range. He set the mug down on the table.

“She’s my daughter,” he asserted. “I know what’s best for her.”

“Is that why her life is working out so beautifully? This is a lousy substitute for treatment.”

“It’s better than jail. She’d get no treatment at all.”

“Who’s been telling you horror stories?”

He wouldn’t answer me. He stood there shaking his stupid handsome head. I sat down at the table uninvited. After a minute he sat down opposite me. We faced each other like bluffing poker players.

“You don’t understand. Sandy and I aren’t planning to stay here . Everything’s all worked out.”

“To leave the country?”

He frowned. “Bernice told you then.”

“It’s a good thing someone did. If you skip you’ll virtually lose your citizenship. Sandy will, anyway. And how will you support yourself in a foreign country?”

“That’s all taken care of. If I look after what I’ve got, and live in the right place, I’ll never have to work again.”

“I thought you were flat broke.”

“Not any more. The whole thing’s working out.” He spoke with the deaf and blind assurance of terrible anxiety. “So please don’t try to stop me, Mr. Archer. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Is your wife going with you?”

“I hope so. She hasn’t decided. We’re flying out tomorrow, and she’s going to have to make up her mind in a hurry.”

“I don’t think either of you should decide in a hurry.”

“Nobody asked for your advice.”

“You did, though, in a way, when you brought me into this case. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

We sat and looked at each other, two poker players with lousy hands who were too far behind to quit. For a moment I could hear the sea more clearly, and a cold draft touched my ankles. Something jarred in another part of the house, and the draft was cut off.