Росс Макдональд: The Far Side of the Dollar

Somebody tapped at the door behind me. “Mr. Patch?” a woman said through the panels.

“Yes, Mrs. Mallow.”

“The boys are getting out of hand. They won’t listen to me. What are you doing in there?”

“Conferring. Dr. Sponti sent a man.”

“Good. We need a man.”

“Is that so?”

He brushed past me and opened the door. “Keep your cracks to yourself, please, Mrs. Mallow. I know one or two things that Dr. Sponti would dearly love to know.”

“So do I,” the woman said.

She was heavily rouged, with dyed red hair arranged in bangs on her forehead. She had on a dark formal dress, about ten years out of fashion, and several loops of imitation pearls. Her face was pleasant enough, in spite of eyes that had been bleared by horrors inner and outer.

She brightened up when she saw me. “Hello.”

“My name is Archer,” I said. “Dr. Sponti brought me in to look into Tom Hillman’s disappearance.”

“He’s a nice-looking boy,” she said. “At least he was until our local Marquis de Sade gave him a working-over.”

“I acted in self-defense,” Patch cried. “I don’t enjoy hurting people. I’m the authority figure in East Hall, and when I’m attacked it’s just like killing their father.”

“You better go and make with the authority, Father. But if you hurt anybody this week I’ll carve the living heart out of your body.”

Patch looked at her as if he believed she might do it. Then he turned on his heel and strode away toward the roaring room. The roaring subsided abruptly, as if he had closed a soundproof door behind him.

“Poor old Patch,” said Mrs. Mallow. “He’s been around too long. Poor old all of us. Too many years of contact with the adolescent mind, if mind is the word, and eventually we all go blah.”

“Why stay?”

“We get so we can’t live in the outside world. Like old convicts. That’s the real hell of it.”

“People around here are extraordinarily ready to spill their problems–”

“It’s the psychiatric atmosphere.”

“But,” I went on, “they don’t tell me much I want to know. Can you give me a clear impression of Tom Hillman?”

“I can give you my own impression.”

She had a little difficulty with the word, and it seemed to affect her balance. She walked into Patch’s office and leaned on his desk facing me. Her face, half-shadowed in the upward light from the lamp, reminded me of a sibyl’s.

“Tom Hillman is a pretty nice boy. He didn’t belong here. He found that out in a hurry. And so he left.”

“Why didn’t he belong here?”

“You want me to go into detail? East Hall is essentially a place for boys with personality and character problems, or with a sociopathic tendency. We keep the more disturbed youngsters, boys and girls, in West Hall.”

“And Tom belonged there?”

“Hardly. He shouldn’t have been sent to Laguna Perdida at all. This is just my opinion, but it ought to be worth something. I used to be a pretty good clinical psychologist.”

She looked down into the light.

“Dr. Sponti seems to think Tom was disturbed.”

“Dr. Sponti never thinks otherwise, about any prospect. Do you know what these kids’ parents pay? A thousand dollars a month, plus extras. Music lessons. Group therapy.”

She laughed harshly. “When half the time it’s the parents who should be here. Or in some worse place.

“A thousand dollars a month,” she repeated. “So Dr. Sponti so-called can draw his twenty-five thousand a year. Which is more than six times what he pays me for holding the kids’ hands.”

She was a woman with a grievance. Sometimes grievances made for truth-telling, but not always. “What do you mean, Dr. Sponti so called?”

“He’s not a medical doctor, or any other kind of real doctor. He took his degree in educational administration, at one of the diploma mills down south. Do you know what he wrote his dissertation on? The kitchen logistics of the medium-sized boarding school.”

“Getting back to Tom,” I said, “why would his father bring him here if he didn’t need psychiatric treatment?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know his father. Probably because he wanted him out of his sight.”

“Why?” I insisted.

“The boy was in some kind of trouble.”

“Did Tom tell you that?”

“He wouldn’t talk about it. But I can read the signs.”

“Have you heard the story that he stole a car?”

“No, but it would help to explain him. He’s a very unhappy young man, and a guilty one. He isn’t one of your hardened J.D.’s. Not that any of them really are.”

“You seem to have liked Tom Hillman.”

“What little I saw of him. He didn’t want to talk last week, and I try never to force myself on the boys. Except for class hours, he spent most of the time in his room. I think he was trying to work something out.”

“Like a plan for revolution?”

Her eyes glinted with amusement. “You heard about that, did you? The boy had more gumption than I gave him credit for. Don’t look so surprised. I’m on the boys’ side. Why else would I be here?”

I was beginning to like Mrs. Mallow. Sensing this, she moved toward me and touched my arm. “I hope that you are, too. On Tom’s side, I mean.”

“I’ll wait until I know him. It isn’t important, anyway.”

“Yes it is. It’s always important.”

“Just what happened between Tom and Mr. Patch Saturday night?”

“I wouldn’t know, really. Saturday night is my night off. You can make a note of that if you like, Mr. Archer.”

She smiled, and I caught a glimpse of her life’s meaning. She cared for other people. Nobody cared for her.

SHE LET ME out through a side door which had to be unlocked. The rain was just heavy enough to wet my face. Dense-looking clouds were gathering over the mountains, which probably meant that the rain was going to persist.

I started back toward the administration building. Sponti was going to have to be told that I must see Tom Hillman’s parents, whether he approved or not. The varying accounts of Tom I’d had, from people who liked or disliked him, gave me no distinct impression of his habits or personality. He could be a persecuted teenager, or a psychopath who knew how to appeal to older women, or something in between, like Fred the Third.

I wasn’t looking where I was going, and a yellow cab almost ran me down in the parking lot. A man in tweeds got out of the back seat. I thought he was going to apologize to me, but he didn’t appear to see me.

He was a tall, silver-haired man, well-fed, well-cared for, probably good-looking under normal conditions. At the moment he looked haggard. He ran into the administration building. I walked in after him, and found him arguing with Sponti’s secretary.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Hillman,” she intoned. “Dr. Sponti is in conference. I can’t possibly interrupt him.”

“I think you’d better,” Hillman said in a rough voice.

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait.”

“But I can’t wait. My son is in the hands of criminals. They’re trying to extort money from me.”

“Is that true?”

Her voice was unprofessional and sharp.

“I’m not in the habit of lying.”

The girl excused herself and went into Sponti’s office, closing the door carefully behind her. I spoke to Hillman, telling him my name and occupation: “Dr. Sponti called me in to look for your son. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. It seems to be time I did.”

“Yes. By all means.”

He took my hand. He was a large, impressive-looking man. His face had the kind of patrician bony structure that doesn’t necessarily imply brains or ability, or even decency, but that generally goes with money. He was deep in the chest and heavy in the shoulders. But there was no force in his grasp. He was trembling all over, like a frightened dog.