Росс Макдональд - Black Money

“Don’t try to snow me, Kitty. This is the head office of the money factory.”

“It’s true what I tell you. That cat who calls himself Martel eloped with our ready cash, and we can’t realize on our investments.”

“How did he get his hands on the cash?”

“He was supposed to be bringing it to Leo. Leo trusted him. I didn’t, but Leo did.”

“Martel was shot to death in Los Angeles yesterday. Another accident for your memory book. He had a hundred thousand dollars in cash with him.”

“Where is it?”

“I thought it might be here. It was black money, wasn’t it, Kitty?”

She flung up her arms in a jagged movement, bringing her fists to her shoulders, then flung them down again. “I’m not admitting anything.”

“It’s time you did some talking, don’t you think? There’s such a thing as buying immunity with information, especially on an income tax rap.”

Though it wasn’t cold in the hall, she had begun to shiver.

“On a murder rap,” I said, “it isn’t so easy. But you can’t afford to hold back. Did Leo or one of his boys knock off Martel?”

“Leo had nothing to do with it.”

“If he did, and you know he did, you better tell me. Unless you want to go on trial with him.”

“I know he didn’t. He hasn’t left this house.”

“You have.”

She was shivering violently. “Listen, mister, I don’t know what you’re trying to do to us–”

“You’ve done it to yourselves. What you do to other people you do to yourself – that’s the converse of the Golden Rule, Kitty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Three murders. Martel yesterday. Marietta Fablon the night before, when incidentally you were in Montevista. And Roy Fablon seven years before that. Remember him?”

She nodded jerkily.

“Tell me what happened to Fablon. You were there.”

“Let me get some clothes on first. I’m freezing. I’ve been in with Leo for about an hour.”

“Is he out by the pool?”

“Yes, he’s working with his physiotherapist. Don’t say anything in front of her, will you? She’s a square.”

Kitty peeled off her rubber cap. Her red hair blossomed out. When she opened one of the closed doors, I caught a glimpse of a tousled pink female bedroom with a mirror in the ceiling over the king-sized bed, alas.

I went outside. A wheelchair stood among the poolside furniture. The woman in the blue bathing suit was standing breast-deep in the water with a man in her arms. His face was moon-shaped and flaccid, his body loose. Only his black eyes held some measure of controlled adult life.

“Hello, Mr. Ketchel.”

“I’ll say hello for him,” the woman said. “Mr. Ketchel had a little cerebral accident about three months ago and he hasn’t said a word since. Have you, honey?”

His sad black eyes answered her. Then they shifted apprehensively to me. He smiled placatingly. Saliva dripped from one corner of his mouth.

Kitty appeared at the sliding glass doors and beckoned me inside. She had put on sequined slacks, which winked suggestively, a high-necked angora sweater, a hasty paint job which reduced her face to meaninglessness. It was hard to tell what she had in mind for me.

She took me into a small front room, out of sight of the swimming pool, and opened the drapes. She stood at the window competing with the view. Beside the bulbs and hollows of her body, the sails on the sea looked dinky and remote, like cocked white napkins on a faded blue tablecloth.

“You see what I’ve got on my hands?” she said with her hands out. “A poor little sick old man. He can’t walk, he can’t talk, he can’t even write his name. He can’t tell me where anything is. He can’t protect me.”

“Who do you need protection from?”

“Leo made a lifetime of enemies. If they knew he was helpless, his life wouldn’t be worth that.” She snapped her fingers. “Neither would mine. Why do you think we’re hiding out in the tules here?”

To her, I thought, the tules meant any place that wasn’t on the Chicago-Vegas-Hollywood axis. I said: “Is Leo’s partner Davis one of the threats?”

“He’s the main one. If Leo dies or gets knocked off, Davis has the most to gain.”

“The Scorpion Club.”

“He already owns it on paper: the Tax Commission made Leo give it up. And he has a beef against Leo.”

“I talked to Davis last night. He offered me money to tell him where Leo is.”

“So that’s why you’re here.”

“Stop jumping to conclusions. I turned him down.”

“Realty?”

“Really. What’s his beef against Leo?”

She shook her head. Her hair flared out in the sunlight. Oddly it reminded me of the orange-pickers’ fire in the railroad yards. The queer forced intimacy of that night still hung as a possibility between me and Kitty.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said.

“Then I’ll tell you. Internal Revenue is after Leo for the money he took off the top. If they can’t find him and the money, maybe even if they can, they’ll pin the rap on Davis. At the very least he’ll lose his license for fronting for a concealed interest. At worst he’ll go to the federal pen for the rest of his life.”

“He isn’t the only one.”

“If you mean Leo, the rest of his life isn’t worth much.”

“What about the rest of my life?”

She touched her furred angora breast. “I’m not even thirty yet. I don’t want to go to prison.”

“Then you better make a deal.”

“And turn Leo in? I will not.”

“They won’t do anything to him, in his condition.”

“They’ll lock him up. He won’t get his therapy. He’ll never learn to talk or write or–” She stopped herself in mid-sentence.

“Or tell you where the money is?”

She hesitated. “What money? You said the money was gone.”

“The hundred grand is. But my information is that Leo took millions off the top. Where is it?”

“I wish I knew, Mister.”

Through her composed mask I could see the calculation going on behind her eyes. “What did you say your name was?”

“Archer. Does Leo know where the money is?”

“I think so. He still has some of his brain left. But it’s hard to tell how much he understands. He always pretends to understand everything I say. So the other day I tried him on some gibberish. He smiled and nodded just the same.”

“What did you say?”

“I wouldn’t want to repeat it. It was just a lot of dirty words about what I’d do for him if he’d learn to talk. Or even write.”

Tensely, she clasped her arms across her chest, “It drives me crazy when I think of what I went through in the hopes of a little peace and security. The beatings he handed out, and the other stuff: Don’t think I didn’t have other chances. But I stuck with Leo. Stuck is the word. Now I’m stuck with a cripple and it’s costing us two grand a month to live – six hundred a month just for doctors and therapy – and I don’t know where next month’s money is coming from.”

Her voice rose. “I’d be a millionaire if I had my rights.”

“Or your wrongs.”

She tossed her head. “I earned that money, I ground it out like coffee over the years. Don’t tell me I’ve got no right to it. I’ve got a right to a decent living.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody had to tell me. A woman with my looks – I can pick and choose.”

It was childish talk, self-hypnotic and pathetic. It gave me a hint of the self-enclosed fantasy that had paired her off with Leo Spillman and kept her with him, insulated from life by his larger fantasy.

“You mean you get picked and chosen. Why don’t you go out and hustle? You’re a big strong girl.”