Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

“The car was wrecked?”

“It’s a total loss. I don’t know how he managed to turn it over, but he did. Fortunately he came out of it without a scratch.”

“Where was he going?”

“He was on his way home. The accident happened practically at our door. I’ll show you the place.”

“Then where had he been?”

“He wouldn’t say. He’d been gone all night, but he wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”

“What night was that?”

“Saturday night. A week ago Saturday night. The police brought him home about six o’clock in the morning, and told me I better have our doctor go over him, which I did. He wasn’t hurt physically, but his mind seemed to be affected. He went into a rage when I tried to ask him where he had spent the night. I’d never seen him like that before. He’d always been a quiet-spoken boy. He said I had no right to know about him, that I wasn’t really his father, and so on and so forth. I’m afraid I lost my temper and slapped him when he said that. Then he turned his back on me and wouldn’t talk at all, about anything.”

“Had he been drinking?”

“I don’t think so. No. I would have smelled it on him.”

“What about drugs?”

I could see his face turn toward me, large and vague in my side vision. “That’s out of the question.”

“I hope so. Dr. Sponti told me your son had a peculiar reaction to tranquilizers. That sometimes happens with habitual users.”

“My son was not a drug user.”

“A lot of young people are, nowadays, and their parents are the last to know about it.”

“No. It wasn’t anything like that,” he said urgently. “The shock of the accident affected his mind.”

“Did the doctor think so?”

“Dr. Shanley is an orthopedic surgeon. He wouldn’t know about psychiatric disturbance. Anyway, he didn’t know what happened that morning, when I went to the judge’s house to arrange for bail. I haven’t told anyone about it.”

I waited, and listened to the windshield wipers. A green and white sign on the shoulder of the road announced: El Rancho .

Hillman said, as if he was glad to have something neutral to say: “You turn off in another quarter mile.”

I slowed down. “You were going to tell me what happened that Sunday morning.”

“No. I don’t believe I will. It has no bearing on the present situation.”

“How do we know that?”

He didn’t answer me. Perhaps the thought of home and neighbors had silenced him.

“Did you say the Carlsons had a down on Tom?”

“I said that, and it’s true.”

“Do you know the reason for it?”

“They have a daughter, Stella. Tom and Stella Carlson were very close. Jay and Rhea disapproved, at least Rhea did. So did Elaine, my wife, for that matter.”

I turned off the main road. The access road passed between tall stone gateposts and became the palm-lined central road bisecting El Rancho. It was one of those rich developments whose inhabitants couldn’t possibly have troubles. Their big houses sat far back behind enormous lawns. Their private golf course lay across the road we were travelling on. The diving tower of their beach club gleamed with fresh aluminum paint in the wet distance.

But like the drizzle, troubles fall in or out of season on everybody.

The road bent around one corner of the golf course. Hillman pointed ahead to a deep gouge in the bank, where the earth was still raw. Above it a pine tree with a damaged trunk was turning brown in places.

“This is where he turned the car over.”

I stopped the car. “Did he explain how the accident happened?”

Hillman pretended not to hear me. We got out of the car. There was no traffic in sight, except for a foursome of die-hard golfers approaching in two carts along the fairway.

“I don’t see any brake- or skid-marks,” I said. “Was your son an experienced driver?”

“Yes. I taught him to drive myself. I spent a great deal of time with him. In fact, I deliberately reduced my work load at the firm several years ago, partly so that I could enjoy Tom’s growing up.”

His phrasing was a little strange, as if growing up was something a boy did for his parents’ entertainment. It made me wonder. If Hillman had been really close to Tom, why had he clapped him into Laguna Perdida School at the first sign of delinquency? Or had there been earlier signs which he was suppressing? One of the golfers waved from his cart as he went by. Hillman gave him a cold flick of the hand and got into my car. He seemed embarrassed to be found at the scene of the accident.

“I’ll be frank with you,” I said as we drove away. “I wish you’d be frank with me. Laguna Perdida is a school for disturbed and delinquent minors. I can’t get it clear why Tom deserved, or needed, to be put there.”

“I did it for his own protection. Good-neighbor Carlson was threatening to prosecute him for car theft.”

“That’s nothing so terrible. He’d have rated probation, if this was a first offense. Was it?”

“Of course it was.”

“Then what were you afraid of?”

“I wasn’t–” he started to say. But he was too honest, or too completely conscious of his fear, to finish the sentence.

“What did he do Sunday morning, when you went to see the judge?”

“He didn’t do anything, really. Nothing happened.”

“But that nothing hit you so hard you won’t discuss it.”

“That’s correct. I won’t discuss it, with you or anyone. Whatever happened last Sunday, or might have happened, has been completely outdated by recent events. My son has been kidnapped. He’s a passive victim, don’t you understand?”

I wondered about that, too. Twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money in my book, but it didn’t seem to be in Hillman’s. If Tom was really in the hands of professional criminals, they would be asking for all that the traffic would bear.

“How much money could you raise if you had to, Mr. Hillman?”

He gave me a swift look. “I don’t see the point.”

“Kidnappers usually go the limit in their demands. I’m trying to find out if they have in this case. I gather you could raise a good deal more than twenty-five thousand.”

“I could, with my wife’s help.”

“Let’s hope it won’t be necessary.”

THE HILLMANS’ PRIVATE drive meandered up an oak-covered rise and circled around in a lawn in front of their house. It was a big old Spanish mansion, with white stucco walls, wrought-iron ornamentation at the windows, red tile roof gleaming dully in the wet. A bright black Cadillac was parked in the circle ahead of us.

“I meant to drive myself this morning,” Hillman said. “But then I didn’t trust myself to drive. Thanks for the lift.”

It sounded like a dismissal. He started up the front steps, and I felt a keen disappointment. I swallowed it and went after him, slipping inside the front door before he closed it.

It was his wife he was preoccupied with. She was waiting for him in the reception hall, bowed forward in a high-backed Spanish chair which made her look tinier than she was. Her snakeskin shoes hung clear of the polished tile floor. She was a beautifully made thin blonde woman in her forties. An aura of desolation hung about her, a sense of uselessness, as if she was in fact the faded doll she resembled. Her green dress went poorly with her almost greenish pallor.

“Elaine?”

She had been sitting perfectly still, with her knees and fists together. She looked up at her husband, and then over his head at the huge Spanish chandelier suspended on a chain from the beamed ceiling two stories up. Its bulbs protruded like dubious fruit from clusters of wrought-iron leaves.