Росс Макдональд - Black Money

He raised his transparent hand. “Hardly that. There’s not much question that he’s a cultivated European.”

“And no question that he has independent means?”

“I’m afraid not. I happen to know that his initial deposit at the local bank was in six figures.”

“I understand you’re on the board of the bank.”

“So you’ve investigated me ,” he said with some resentment. “You do me too much honor.”

“I got it accidentally from Mr. McMinn, when I cashed a check. Can you find out where Martel’s money came from?”

“I suppose I can try.”

“It could be borrowed money,” I said. “I’ve known con men who used borrowed money, sometimes borrowed from gangsters, to get local status quickly.”

“For what possible purpose?”

“I know of one who bought a municipal bus system on terms, cannibalized it, then moved out and left it bankrupt. In the last few years they’ve even been buying banks.”

“Martel hasn’t been buying anything that I know of.”

“Except Virginia Fablon.”

Jamieson wrinkled his forehead. He picked up his highball, saw that it was nearly gone, and got up to make himself another. He was tall, but thin and frail. He moved like an old man, but I suspected he wasn’t much older than I was – fifty at most.

When he’d made his fresh drink and comforted himself with part of it and resettled himself in his leather armchair, I said: “Does Ginny have money?”

“Hardly enough to interest a confidence man. She isn’t a girl who needs money to interest any kind of a man – in fact she’s probably turned down more advances that most young women dream of. Frankly, I was surprised when she accepted Peter, and not so very surprised when she broke the engagement. I tried to tell him that last night. It was safe enough when they were high school kids. But a beautiful young wife can be a curse to an ordinary man, especially if he loses her.”

The flesh around his eyes was crumpling again. “It’s dangerous to get what you want, you know. It sets you up for tragedy. But my poor son can’t see that. Young people can’t learn from the misfortunes of their elders.”

He was becoming faintly garrulous. Looking past him at the mountains, I had a feeling of unreality, as if the sunlit world had moved back out of reach.

“We were talking about the Fablons and their money.”

Jamieson visibly pulled himself together. “Yes, of course. They can’t have a great deal. The Fablons did have money at one time, but Roy gambled a lot of it away. The rumor was that that was one reason he committed suicide. Fortunately Marietta has her own small private income. They have enough to live comfortably, but as I said, certainly not enough to tempt a fortune-hunter. Let alone a fortune-hunter with a hundred thousand dollars in cash of his own.”

“Is a hundred grand in the bank all that Martel would need to get into the club?”

“The Tennis Club? Certainly not. You have to be sponsored by at least one member and passed on by the membership committee.”

“Who sponsored him?”

“Mrs. Bagshaw, I believe. It’s a common enough practice, when members lease their houses in town here. It’s nothing against the tenant.”

“And nothing in his favor. Do you accept the idea that Martel is some kind of political refugee?”

“He may very well be. Frankly, I didn’t discourage Peter from hiring you because I’d like to satisfy my curiosity. And I’d also like him to get this business of Ginny out of his system. It’s hurting him more than you perhaps realize. I’m his father, and I can see it. I may not be much of a father to him, but I do know my son. And I know Ginny, too.”

“You don’t want Ginny as a daughter-in-law?”

“On the contrary. She’d brighten any house, even this one. But I’m very much afraid she doesn’t love my poor son. I’m afraid she agreed to marry him because she felt sorry for him.”

“Mrs. Fablon said very much the same thing.”

“So you’ve talked to Marietta?”

“A little.”

“She’s a much more serious woman than she pretends. So is Ginny. Ginny has always been a very serious young woman, even when she was a child. She used to sit in my study here whole weekends at a time, reading the books.”

“The Book of the Dead.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“You mentioned that her father committed suicide.”

“Yes.” Jamieson stirred uneasily, and reached for his highball, as if the little death it provided was homeopathic medicine against the big one waiting. “The decimation among my friends these last ten years has been horrendous. Not to mention my enemies.”

“Which was Roy Fablon, friend or enemy?”

“Roy was a friend, a very good friend at one time. Of course I disapproved of what he did to his wife and daughter. Ginny was only sixteen or seventeen at the time, and it hit her hard.”

“What did he do?”

“Walked into the ocean with his clothes on one night. They found his body about ten days later. The sharks had been at it, and he was scarcely identifiable.”

He passed his hand over his gray face, and took a long drink.

“Did you see the body?”

“Yes. They made me look at it. It was a very humiliating experience.”

“Humiliating?”

“It’s dreadful to realize how mortal we are, and what time and tide will do to us. I can remember Roy Fablon when he was one of the best-looking men at Princeton, and one of the finest athletes.”

“You knew him at Princeton?”

“Very well. He was my roommate. I was really the one who brought him out here to Montevista.”

I rose to leave, but he held me at the door. “There’s something I should ask you Mr. Archer. How well do you know Montevista? I don’t mean topographically. Socially.”

“Not well. It’s rich for my blood.”

“There’s something I should tell you, then, as an old Montevista hand. Almost anything can happen here. Almost everything has. It’s partly the champagne climate and partly, to be frank, the presence of inordinate amounts of money. Montevista’s been an international watering resort for nearly a century. Deposed maharajahs rub shoulders with Nobel prize-winners and Chicago meat packer’s daughters marry the sons of South American billionaires.

“In this context, Martel isn’t so extraordinary. In fact when you compare him with some of our Montevista denizens, he’s quite routine. You really should bear that in mind.”

“I’ll try to.”

I thanked him and left.

The heat of the day was waning with the sun. Approaching the Tennis Club, I could feel a cool wind from the ocean on my face. The flag on top of the main building was whipping.

The woman at the front desk informed me that Peter was probably in the showers. She’d seen him come up from the beach a few minutes ago. I could go in and wait for him by the pool.

The lifeguard’s blue canvas chair was unoccupied, and I sat in it. The afternoon wind had driven away most of the sunbathers. On the far side of the pool, in a sheltered corner behind a plate-glass screen, four white-haired ladies were playing cards with the grim concentration of bridge players. The three fates plus one, I thought, wishing there was someone I could say it to.

A large boy in trunks who didn’t look like a possible audience came out of the dressing rooms. He disposed his statuesque limbs on the tile deck near me. His smooth simple face was complicated by a certain wildness of the eye. His blond head had not been able to resist the bleach bottle. I noticed that his hair was wet and striated as if he had just been combing it.

“Is Peter Jamieson inside?”

“Yeah. He’s getting dressed. You got my chair, but that’s all right. I can sit here.”