Росс Макдональд: The Far Side of the Dollar

“Eyes?”

“Dark blue, I think. His hair is dark blond. He has what might be called aquiline features, like his father.”

“Identifying marks?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I know of none.”

“Why was he brought here?”

“For treatment, of course. But he didn’t stay long enough to benefit.”

“Exactly what’s the matter with him? You said he was difficult, but that’s a pretty general description.”

“It was meant to be. It’s hard to tell what ails these boys in adolescent storm. Often we help them without knowing how or why. I’m not a medical doctor, in any case.”

“I thought you were.”

“No. We have medical doctors associated with our staff, of course, both physicians and psychiatrists. There wouldn’t be much point in talking to them. I doubt if Tom was here long enough even to meet his therapist. But there’s no doubt he was high.”

“High?”

“Emotionally high, running out of control. He was in a bad way when his father brought him here. We gave him tranquilizers, but they don’t always work in the same way on different subjects.”

“Did he cause you a lot of trouble?”

“He did indeed. Frankly, I doubt if we’ll readmit him even if he does come back.”

“But you’re hiring me to find him.”

“I have no choice.”

We discussed money matters, and he gave me a check. Then I walked down the road to East Hall. Before I went in to see Mr. Patch, I turned and looked at the mountains on the far side of the valley. They loomed like half-forgotten faces through the overcast. The lonely blue heron rose from the edge of the slough and sailed toward them.

EAST HALL WAS a sprawling one-story stucco building, which somehow didn’t belong on that expansive landscape. Its mean and unprepossessing air had something to do with the high little windows, all of them heavily screened. Or with the related fact that it was a kind of prison which pretended not to be. The spiky pyracantha shrubs bordering the lawn in front of the building were more like barriers than ornaments. The grass looked dispirited even in the rain.

So did the line of boys who were marching in the front door as I came up. Boys of all ages from twelve to twenty, boys of all shapes and sizes, with only one thing in common: they marched like members of a defeated army. They reminded me of the very young soldiers we captured on the Rhine in the last stages of the last war.

Two students’ leaders kept them in some sort of line. I followed them, into a big lounge furnished with rather dilapidated furniture. The two leaders went straight to a ping-pong table that stood in one corner, picked up paddles, and began to play a rapid intense game with a ball that one of them produced from his windbreaker pocket. Six or seven boys began to watch them. Four or five settled down with comic books. Most of the rest of them stood around and watched me.

A hairy-faced young fellow who ought to have started to shave came up to me smiling. His smile was brilliant, but it faded like an optical illusion. He came so close that his shoulder nudged my arm. Some dogs will nudge you like that, to test your friendliness.

“Are you the new supervisor?”

“No. I thought Mr. Patch was the supervisor.”

“He won’t last.”

A few of the younger boys giggled. The hairy one responded like a successful comedian. “This is the violent ward. They never last.”

“It doesn’t look so violent to me. Where is Mr. Patch?”

“Over at dining commons. He’ll be here in a minute. Then we have organized fun.”

“You sound pretty cynical for your age. How old are you?”

“Ninety-nine.” His audience murmured encouragingly. “Mr. Patch is only forty-nine. It makes it hard for him to be my father-image.”

“Maybe I could talk to Mrs. Mallow.”

“She’s in her room drinking her lunch. Mrs. Mallow always drinks her lunch.”

The bright malice in his eyes alternated with a darker feeling. “Are you a father?”

“No.”

In the background the ping-pong ball was clicking back and forth like mindless conversation.

A member of the audience spoke up. “He’s not a father.”

“Maybe he’s a mother,” said the hairy boy. “Are you a mother?”

“He doesn’t look like a mother. He has no bosoms.”

“My mother has no bosoms,” said a third one. “That’s why I feel rejected.”

“Come off it, boys.”

The hell of it was, they wished I was a father, or even a mother, one of theirs, and the wish stood in their eyes. “You don’t want me to feel rejected, do you?”

Nobody answered. The hairy boy smiled up at me. It lasted a little longer than his first smile. “What’s your name? I’m Frederick Tyndal the Third.”

“I’m Lew Archer the First.”

I drew the boy away from his audience. He pulled back from my touch, but he came along and sat down with me on a cracked leather couch. Some of the younger boys had put an overplayed record on a player. Two of them began to dance together to the raucous self-parodying song. “Surfin’ ain’t no sin,” was the refrain.

“Did you know Tom Hillman, Fred?”

“A little. Are you his father?”

“No. I said I wasn’t a father.”

“Adults don’t necessarily tell you the truth.”

He plucked at the hairs on his chin as if he hated the signs of growing up. “My father said he was sending me away to military school. He’s a big shot in the government,” he added flatly, without pride, and then, in a different tone: “Tom Hillman didn’t get along with his father, either. So he got railroaded here. The Monorail to the Magic Kingdom.”

He produced a fierce ecstatic hopeless grin.

“Did Tom talk to you about it?”

“A little. He wasn’t here long. Five days. Six. He came in Sunday night and took off Saturday night.”

He squirmed uneasily on the creaking leather. “Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“I just wondered. You ask questions like a cop.”

“Did Tom do something that would interest the cops?”

“We all do, don’t we?”

His hot and cold running glance went around the room, pausing on the forlorn antics of the dancing boys. “You don’t qualify for East Hall unless you’re a juvie. I was a criminal mastermind myself. I forged the big shot’s name on a fifty-dollar check and went to San Francisco for the weekend.”

“What did Tom do?”

“Stole a car, I guess. It was a first offense, he said, and he would of got probation easy. But his father didn’t want the publicity, so he put him in here. Also, I guess Tom had a fight with his father.”

“I see.”

“Why are you so fascinated in Tom?”

“I’m supposed to find him, Fred.”

“And bring him back here?”

“I doubt that they’ll readmit him.”

“He’s lucky.”

More or less unconsciously, he moved against me again. I could smell the untended odor of his hair and body, and sense his desolation. “I’d break out of here myself if I had a place to go. But the big shot would turn me over to the Youth Authority. It would save him money, besides.”

“Did Tom have a place to go?”

He jerked upright and looked at my eyes from the corners of his. “I didn’t say that.”

“I’m asking you.”

“He wouldn’t tell me if he had.”

“Who was closest to him in the school?”

“He wasn’t close to anybody. He was so upset when he came in, they put him in a room by himself. I went in and talked to him one night, but he didn’t say much to me.”

“Nothing about where he planned to go?”

“He didn’t plan anything. He tried to start a riot Saturday night but the rest of us were chicken. So he took off. He seemed to be very excited.”