Росс Макдональд - Black Money

“I didn’t do anything out of line, did I? You got no call to write down my license number.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said in a semi-official tone. “What are you doing here?”

“Sightseeing. I’m a tourist.”

His pale eyes glanced around at the sparsely inhabited hills as if he had never been out in the country before. “This is a public road, isn’t it?”

“We’ve had a report of a man who was representing himself as a law officer last night.”

His glance lighted briefly on my face, then jumped away. “It couldn’t be me. I never been here before in my life.”

“Let’s see your driver’s license.”

“Listen,” he said, “we can get together on this. I don’t have much with me but I got other resources.”

He drew a lonely ten from a worn calfskin billfold and tucked it in the breast pocket of my jacket. “Here. Buy something for the kids. And call me Harry.”

He smiled with conscious charm. But the charm he was conscious of, if it had ever existed, had dried up and blown away. His front teeth glared at me like a pair of chisels. I removed the ten from my pocket, tore it in half, and gave him back the pieces.

His face fell apart. “That’s a ten-dollar bill. You must be a kook to tear up money like that.”

“You can put it together with Scotch tape. Now let me see your license before you commit another felony.”

“Felony?”

He said it the way a sick man pronounces the name of his disease.

“Bribery and impersonating an officer are felonies, Harry.”

He looked around at the daylight as if it had betrayed him, again. A little pale moon hung in a corner of the sky, faint as a thumbprint on a windowpane.

A fiercer light flashed down the canyon above us and almost dazzled me. It seemed to come from the head of a man who was standing with a girl on the terrace of the Bagshaw house. For a second I had the impression that he had great round eyes and that they had emitted the flashing light. Then I realized he was watching us through binoculars.

The man and the girl with him were as small as figures on a wedding cake. Their height and distance from me gave me a queer feeling, as if they were somehow unattainable, out of reach, out of time.

Harry Felony scrambled into his car and tried to start the engine. It turned over slowly like a dead man turning over in his grave. I had time to open the far door and get in on the gnawed leather seat.

“Where are we going, Harry?”

“Nowhere.”

He turned off the ignition and dropped his hands. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“Because you stopped a young man on this road last night and said you were a detective and asked him a lot of questions.”

He was silent while his malleable face went through new adjustments. “I am a detective, in a way.”

“Where’s your badge?”

He reached into his pocket for something, probably a dimestore badge, then changed his mind. “I don’t have one,” he admitted. “I’m just a kind of amateur dick, you might say, looking into something for a friend. She–” he swallowed the pronoun “–they didn’t say anything about this kind of trouble.”

“Maybe we can make a deal after all. Let me see your driver’s license.”

He got out his worn billfold and handed me a Photostat.

HARRY HENDRICKS

10750 Vanowen, Apt. 12

Canoga Park, Calif.

Sex M Color hair brn Color eyes blu

Height 5’ 9” Weight 165 Married no

Date of birth Apr 2 1928 Age 38

From the lower left-hand corner a photograph of Harry grinned at me. I took down the address and the number of the license in my notebook.

“What do you want all that stuff for?” he said in a worried voice.

“So I can keep track of you. What do you do for a living, Harry?”

“Sell cars.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“ Used cars, on commission,” he said bitterly. “I used to be an insurance adjuster but the little fellows can’t compete with the big boys anymore. I’ve done a lot of things in my time. Name it and I done it.”

“Ever do time?”

He gave me a hurt look. “Of course not. You said something about a deal.”

“I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“Hell, you can trust me. I’ve got connections.”

“In the used car business?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said.

“And what do your connections want you to do to Martel?”

“Nothing to him. I’m just supposed to case the joint and find out who he is if I can.”

“Who is he?”

Harry spread his hands on top of the steering wheel. “I only been in town less than twenty-four hours, and the local yokels don’t know a thing about him.”

He peered at me sideways. “If you’re a cop like you say–”

“I didn’t say. I’m a private detective. This area is strictly patrolled.”

The two facts were true, but unrelated.

Harry related them. “Then you should be able to get the information. There’s money in it, we could split it two ways.”

“How much?”

“A hundred I could promise you.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. Where are you staying in town?”

“The Breakwater Hotel. That’s on the waterfront.”

“And who is the woman who put you up to this?”

“Nobody said anything about a woman.”

“You said ‘she’.”

“I must have been thinking of my wife. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“I can’t believe that. Your driver’s license says you aren’t married.”

“I am married, though.”

The point seemed important to him, as if I’d denied him membership in the human race.

“That’s a mistake on the license. I forgot I was married that day, I mean–” His explanation was interrupted by the smooth mutter of a car coming down the winding driveway above us. It was Martel’s black Bentley. The man behind the wheel wore rectangular dark glasses, which covered the upper part of his face like a mask.

The girl beside him had on dark glasses, too. They almost made her look like any Hollywood blonde.

Harry got out his miniature camera, which was hardly bigger than a cigarette lighter. He ran across the road and planted himself in the entrance to the driveway, holding the camera concealed in his right hand.

The driver of the Bentley got out facing him. He was compact and muscular, dressed in English-looking sports clothes, tweeds and brogues, which didn’t go with his own swarthy sleekness. He said in a controlled, faintly accented voice: “Can I help you in any way?”

“Yeah. Watch the birdies.” Harry raised the camera and took his picture. “Thanks, Mr. Martel.”

“You are not welcome.”

Martel’s fleshy mouth became ugly. “Give me that camera please.”

“Nuts. It’s worth a hundred and fifty bucks.”

“It’s worth two hundred to me,” Martel said, “with the film in it. I have a passion for privacy, you see.”

He pronounced the word ‘passion’ with a long nasal ‘o,’ like a Frenchman. But he was dark for a Frenchman.

I looked at the blonde girl in the car. Though I couldn’t see her eyes, she seemed to be looking back across the road at me. The lower part of her face was immobile, as if she was afraid to react to the situation. It had the dead beauty of marble.

Harry was calculating in his head, almost audibly. “You can have it for three hundred.”

“ Très bien , three hundred. That should include a – what is the word? – receipt, with your signature and address.”

“Uh-uh.”

I had a quick impression of Harry’s whole life: he didn’t know how to stop when he was winning.