Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

We both had our clothes on now, and they seemed to impose a certain formality on the conversation. Sandy started out by thanking me, though, which wasn’t a bad sign.

I told her not to mention it, I’d been dying for a swim. “Have you decided to give life a try?”

“I’m not making any promises,” she said. “It’s a stinking world.”

“You don’t improve it by committing suicide.”

“I do for me.” She was still and silent for a while. “I thought I could break away from it all with Davy.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“It was his. He picked me up on the Strip because somebody told him that I knew the Hacketts. He needed a way to get to Steve, and I was glad to help.”

“Why?”

“You know why. I wanted to get back at him and Lupe. But it didn’t really make me feel any better. It only made me feel worse.”

“What did Davy want?”

“It’s hard to tell. He always has three or four reasons for everything, three or four different versions. It isn’t his fault. Nobody ever told him the truth, about who he was, until Laurel did. And even then he didn’t know it was true. Laurel was drunk when she told him.”

“Told him that Stephen Hackett was his father?”

“I don’t know what she told him. Honestly.” It was her mother’s word, and she said it with her mother’s intonation. “Davy and I weren’t talking much at the end. I was afraid to go with him, and afraid to quit. I didn’t know how far he would go. Neither did he.”

“He’s gone further now.” I thought it was time to tell her, before the changes of the night had crystallized. “Davy was shot dead this afternoon.”

She looked at me dully, as if her capacity to react was used up for the time being. “Who shot him?”

“Henry Langston.”

“I thought he was a friend of Davy’s.”

“He was, but he had troubles of his own. Most people do.”

I left her with the thought and went into the bedroom where her father was trying on clothes. He settled for a turtleneck sweater and a pair of slacks. The sweater made him look young and bold, like an actor.

“What’s on the agenda, Keith?”

“I’m going up to Hackett’s place and give him back his check.”

His statement astonished me. He looked slightly astonished himself.

“I’m glad you feel that way. But you better let me have the check. It’s evidence.”

“Against me?”

“Against Hackett. How much money is involved?”

“The check is for a hundred thousand.”

“Plus how much cash for the tapes?”

He barely hesitated. “Ten thousand cash. I paid it over to Mrs. Fleischer.”

“What story did Hackett give you about the tapes?”

“He said Fleischer was trying to blackmail him.”

“For doing what?”

“He didn’t say. I gather he was having an affair, though.”

“When did you deliver the tapes to him?”

“Just now. Just before you came.”

“Who was there, Keith?”

“Mr. Hackett and his mother were the only ones I saw.”

“Do they have a tape recorder?”

“Yes. I saw them try the tapes on it for size.”

“How many tapes are there altogether?”

“Six.”

“Where did you put them?”

“I left them with Mrs. Marburg in the library. I don’t know what they did with them after that.”

“And they gave you a check? Right?”

“Yes. Hackett did.”

He took the yellow slip out of his wallet and handed it over. It was very like the one in my office safe, except that it was signed by Stephen Hackett instead of his mother, and not postdated.

The moral force required to part with the money generated more of the same in Sebastian. He followed me into the living room, moving eagerly. “I’ll go along with you. I want to tell that Hackett creep what I think of him.”

“No. You’ve got better things to do.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Taking your daughter back to the Center,” I said.

“Can’t I just simply take her home?”

“It’s too soon for that.”

“It always will be,” Sandy said. But she was looking at her father with changing eyes.

CAPTAIN AUBREY was waiting for me at the wicket which opened onto the porch of the Sheriff’s substation. We talked in the dingy hallway of the old building, out of hearing of the officer on duty. Aubrey, when I sketched out what I knew and some of what I guessed, wanted to go along to the Hackett place.

I reminded him that he’d have to get a search warrant, and that might take some doing. Meanwhile Hackett could be destroying the tapes or erasing the sound from them.

“What makes the tapes so important?” Aubrey wanted to know.

“The death of Laurel Smith. I found out tonight that Stephen Hackett had an affair with her about twenty years ago. Davy Spanner was their illegitimate son.”

“And you think Hackett killed her?”

“It’s too early to say. I know he paid ten grand for the tapes.”

“Even so, you can’t just go in and seize them.”

“I don’t have to, Captain. I’ve been working for Mrs. Marburg. I can get into the house.”

“Can you get out again?” he said with a grim half-smile.

“I think I can. I may need some backstopping though. Give me some time alone with them first.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll play it by ear. If I need help I’ll holler.”

Aubrey followed me out to my car and leaned in at the window:

“Watch out for Mrs. Marburg. At the time of her second husband’s death I–” he cleared his throat and edited the slander out of his warning “–there was some suspicion that she was involved.”

“She may have been. Mark Hackett was killed by her son by her first husband – a man named Jasper Blevins.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Just about. I got it from Jasper Blevins’s grandmother, and it cost her some pain to tell me. She held back until she knew Jasper was dead.”

“Too many people have been dying,” Aubrey said. “Don’t you be one of them.”

His unmarked car followed me to the Hacketts’ gate. I drove on up the private road to the pass and across the dam. The house beyond the lake had lights in it, faint behind drawn curtains. As I knocked on the door I felt I was coming here for the last time.

Gerda Hackett answered the door. She looked anxious and lonely, like an overweight ghost haunting the wrong house. She brightened up unnervingly when she saw me:

“Mr. Archer! Kommen Sie nur ’rein .”

I stepped inside. “How’s your husband?”

“Much better, thank you.” She added in a disappointed tone: “It’s Stephen you wish to see?”

“And Mrs. Marburg.”

“They’re in the library. I’ll tell them you’re here.”

“Don’t bother. I know where it is.”

I left her standing like a stranger at the doorway of her house. Moving through the massive building with its institutional feeling, I could guess why Hackett had married a girl from another country. He didn’t want to be known.

The library door was closed. I could hear a voice behind it, a woman’s voice, and when I pressed my ear against the oak door I recognized the voice of Laurel Smith. It made the hair on the back of my neck bristle. Then my heart began to pound with the crazy hope that Laurel had survived.

I was close to breaking down, like a man coming near to the end of a long climb: an inverted downward climb into the past. I could hardly breathe the air there, and I leaned against the library door.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lippert,” Laurel was saying. “You want me to give you a receipt?”

“It isn’t necessary,” another woman’s voice said. “I’ll be getting the check back from the bank.”