Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

“What were you going to say, Mrs. Hillman?”

“I hardly know. I’m not a psychologist, though I once had some training in philosophy. I’ve felt that Ralph was trying to live out some sort of a fantasy with Tom – perhaps relive those terrible war years and make good his losses somehow. But you can’t use people in that way, as figures in a fantasy. The whole thing broke down between Tom and his father.”

“And Tom caught on that your husband wasn’t his father.”

She looked at me nervously. “You think he did?”

“I’m reasonably certain of it,” I said, remembering what Fred Tyndal had told me. “Mrs. Hillman, what happened on the Sunday morning that you put Tom in Laguna Perdida?”

She said quickly: “It was Ralph’s doing, not mine.”

“Had they quarreled?”

“Yes. Ralph was horribly angry with him.”

“What about?”

She bowed her head. “My husband has forbidden me to speak of it.”

“Did Tom say something or do something very wrong?”

She sat with her head bowed and wouldn’t answer me. “I’ve told you more than I should have,” she said eventually, “in the hope of getting to the bottom of this mess. Now will you tell me something? You mentioned a hotel called the Barcelona, and you said that Tom had been hiding there. You used the word ‘hiding’.”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t he being held?”

“I don’t know. There may have been some duress, possibly psychological duress. But I doubt that he was held in the ordinary sense.”

She looked at me with distaste. I’d brought her some very tough pieces of information to chew on, and probably this was the hardest one of all.

“You’ve hinted from the beginning that Tom cooperated willingly with the kidnappers.”

“It was a possibility that had to be considered. It still is.”

“Please don’t sidestep the question. I can stand a direct answer.” She smiled dimly. “At this point I couldn’t stand anything else.”

“All right. I think Tom went with Harley of his own free will, rode in the trunk of Harley’s car to the Barcelona Hotel, and stayed there without anybody having to hold a gun on him. I don’t understand his reasons, and I won’t until I talk to him. But he probably didn’t know about the extortion angle. There’s no evidence that he profited from it, anyway. He’s broke.”

“How do you know? Have you seen him?”

“I’ve talked to somebody who talked to him. Tom said he needed money.”

“I suppose that’s good news in a way.”

“I thought it was.”

I made a move to go, but she detained me. There was more on her mind: “This Barcelona Hotel you speak of, is it the big old rundown place on the coast highway?”

“Yes. It’s closed up now.”

“And Tom hid, or was hidden, there?”

I nodded. “The watchman at the hotel, a man named Sipe, was a partner in the extortion. He may have been the brains behind it, to the extent that it took any brains. He was shot to death this morning. The other partner, Harley, was stabbed to death last night.”

Her face was open, uncomprehending, as if she couldn’t quite take in these terrible events.

“How extraordinary,” she breathed.

“Not so very. They were heavy thieves, and they came to a heavy end.”

“I don’t mean those violent deaths, although they’re part of it. I mean the deep connections you get in life, the coming together of the past and the present.”

“What do you have in mind?”

She grimaced. “Something ugly, but I’m afraid it has to be said. You see, the Barcelona Hotel, where my son, my adopted son, has been staying with criminals, apparently” – she took a shuddering breath – “that very place was the scene of Ralph’s affair with Susanna Drew. And did you say that the watchman’s name was Sipe, the one who was shot?”

“Yes. Otto Sipe.”

“Did he once work as a detective in the hotel?”

“Yes. He was the kind of detective who gives our trade a bad name.”

“I have reason to know that,” she said. “I knew Mr. Sipe. That is, I talked to him once, and he left an impression that I haven’t been able to wipe out of my memory. He was a gross, corrupt man. He came to my house in Brentwood in the spring of 1945. He was the one who told me about Ralph’s affair with Miss Drew.”

“He wanted money, of course.”

“Yes, and I gave him money. Two hundred dollars, he asked for, and when he saw that I was willing to pay he raised it to five hundred, all the cash I had on hand. Well, the money part is unimportant. It always is,” she said, reminding me that she had never needed money.

“What did Sipe have to say to you?”

“That my husband was committing adultery – he had a snapshot to prove it – and it was his duty under the law to arrest him. I don’t know now if there was ever such a law on the books–”

“There was. I don’t think it’s been enforced lately, or an awful lot of people would be in jail.”

“He mentioned jail, and the effect it would have on my husband’s reputation. This was just about the time when Ralph began to believe he could make Captain. I know from this height and distance it sounds childish, but it was the biggest thing in his life at that time. He came from an undistinguished family, you see – his father was just an unsuccessful small businessman – and he felt he had to shine in so many ways to match my family’s distinction.”

She looked at me with sad intelligence. “We all need something to buttress our pride, don’t we, fragments to shore against our ruins.”

“You were telling me about your interview with Otto Sipe.”

“So I was. My mind tends to veer away from scenes like that. In spite of the pain and shock I felt – it was my first inkling that Ralph was unfaithful to me – I didn’t want to see all his bright ambitions wrecked. So I paid the dreadful man his dirty money, and he gave me his filthy snapshot.”

“Did you hear from him again?”

“No.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t attach himself to you for life.”

“Perhaps he intended to. But Ralph stopped him. I told Ralph about his visit, naturally.”

She added: “I didn’t show him the snapshot. That I destroyed.”

“How did Ralph stop him?”

“I believe he knocked him down and frightened him off: I didn’t get a very clear account from Ralph. By then we weren’t communicating freely. I went home to Boston and I didn’t see Ralph again until the end of the year, when he brought his ship to Boston harbor. We had a reconciliation of sorts. It was then we decided to adopt a child.”

I wasn’t listening too closely. The meanings of the case were emerging. Ralph Hillman had had earlier transactions with both of the extortionists. He had been Mike Harley’s superior officer, and had thrown him out of the Navy. He had knocked down Otto Sipe. And they had made him pay for his superiority and his power.

Elaine was thinking along the same lines. She said in a soft, despondent voice: “Mr. Sipe would never have entered our lives if Ralph hadn’t used that crummy hotel for his crummy little purposes.”

“You mustn’t blame your husband for everything. No doubt he did wrong. We all do. But the things he did nineteen or twenty years ago aren’t solely responsible for this kidnapping, or whatever it was. It isn’t that simple.”

“I know. I don’t blame him for everything.”

“Sipe, for instance, would probably have been involved anyway. His partner Mike Harley knew your husband and had a grievance against him.”

“But why did Tom, my poor dear Tom, end up at that same hotel? Isn’t there a fatality in it?”

“Maybe there is. To Sipe and Harley it was simply a convenient place to keep him.”