Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

“All right. Where did he spend his time away from home?”

The Hillmans looked at each other, as if the secret of Tom’s whereabouts was somehow hidden in each other’s faces. The red telephone interrupted their dumb communion, like a loud thought. Elaine Hillman gasped. The photograph in her hand fell to the floor. She wilted against her husband.

He held her up. “It wouldn’t be for us. That’s Tom’s private telephone.”

“You want me to take it?” I said through the second ring.

“Please do.”

I sat on the bed and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Tom?” said a high, girlish voice. “Is that you, Tommy?”

“Who is this calling?” I tried to sound like a boy.

The girl said something like “Augh” and hung up on me.

I set down the receiver: “It was a girl or a young woman. She wanted Tom.”

The woman spoke with a touch of malice that seemed to renew her strength: “That’s nothing unusual. I’m sure it was Stella Carlson. She’s been calling all week.”

“Does she always hang up like that?”

“No. I talked to her yesterday. She was full of questions, which of course I refused to answer. But I wanted to make sure that she hadn’t seen Tom. She hadn’t.”

“Does she know anything about what’s happened?”

“I hope not,” Hillman said. “We’ve got to keep it in the family. The more people know, the worse–” He left another sentence dangling in the air.

I moved away from the telephone and picked up the fallen photograph. In a kind of staggering march step, Elaine Hillman went to the bed and straightened out the bedspread where I had been sitting. Everything had to be perfect in the room, I thought, or the god would not be appeased and would never return to them. When she had finished smoothing the bed, she flung herself face down on it and lay still.

Hillman and I withdrew quietly and went downstairs to wait for the call that mattered. There was a phone in the bar alcove off the sitting room, and another in the butler’s pantry, which I could use to listen in. To get to the butler’s pantry we had to go through the music room, where the grand piano loomed, and across a formal dining room which had a dismal air, like a reconstructed room in a museum.

The past was very strong here, like an odor you couldn’t quite place. It seemed to be built into the very shape of the house, with its heavy dark beams and thick walls and deep windows; it would almost force the owner of the house to feel like a feudal lord. But the role of hidalgo hung loosely on Hillman, like something borrowed for a costume party. He and his wife must have rattled around in the great house, even when the boy was there.

Back in the sitting room, in front of the uncertain fire, I had a chance to ask Hillman some more questions. The Hillmans had two servants; a Spanish couple named Perez who had looked after Tom from infancy. Mrs. Perez was probably out in the kitchen. Her husband was in Mexico, visiting his family.

“You know he’s in Mexico?”

“Well,” Hillman said, “his wife has had a card from Sinaloa. Anyway, the Perezes are devoted to us, and to Tom. We’ve had them with us ever since we moved here and bought this house.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Over sixteen years. We moved here, the three of us, after I was separated from the Navy. Another engineer and I founded our own firm here, Technological Enterprises. We’re had very gratifying success, supplying components to the military and then NASA. I was able to go into semi retirement not long ago.”

“You’re young to retire, Mr. Hillman.”

“Perhaps.”

He looked around a little restlessly, as if he disliked talking about himself. “I’m still the chairman of the board, of course. I go down to the office several mornings a week. I play a lot of golf, do a lot of hunting and sailing.”

He sounded weary of his life. “This summer I’ve been teaching Tom calculus. It isn’t available in his high school. I thought it would come in handy if he made it to Cal Tech or MIT I went to MIT myself. Elaine was a student at Radcliffe. She was born on Beacon Street, you know.”

We’re prosperous and educated people, he seemed to be saying, first-class citizens: how can the world have aimed such a dirty blow at us? He leaned his large face forward until his hands supported it again.

The telephone rang in the alcove. I heard it ring a second time as I skidded around the end of the dining-room table. At the door of the butler’s pantry I almost knocked down a small round woman who was wiping her hands on her apron. Her emotional dark eyes recoiled from my face.

“I was going to answer it,” she said.

“I will, Mrs. Perez.”

She retreated into the kitchen and I closed the door after her. The only light in the pantry came through the semicircular hatch to the dining room. The telephone was on the counter inside it, no longer ringing. Gently I raised the receiver.

“What was that?” a man’s voice said. “You got the FBI on the line or something?”

The voice was a western drawl with a faint whine in it.

“Certainly not. I’ve followed your instructions to the letter.”

“I hope I can believe you, Mr. Hillman. If I thought you were having this call traced I’d hang up and goodbye Tom.”

The threat came easily, with a kind of flourish, as if the man enjoyed this kind of work.

“Don’t hang up.”

Hillman’s voice was both pleading and loathing. “I have the money for you, at least I’ll have it here in a very short while. I’ll be ready to deliver it whenever you say.”

“Twenty-five thousand in small bills?”

“There will be nothing larger than a twenty.”

“All unmarked?”

“I told you I’ve obeyed you to the letter. My son’s safety is all I care about.”

“I’m glad you get the picture, Mr. Hillman. You pick up fast, and I like that. Matter of fact, I hate to do this to you. And I’d certainly hate to do anything to this fine boy of yours.”

“Is Tom with you now?” Hillman said.

“More or less. He’s nearby.”

“Could I possibly talk to him?”

“No.”

“How do I know he’s alive?”

The man was silent for a long moment. “You don’t trust me, Mr. Hillman. I don’t like that.”

“How can I trust–?” Hillman bit the sentence in half.

“I know what you were going to say. How can you trust a lousy creep like me? That isn’t our problem, Hillman. Our problem is can I trust a creep like you. I know more about you than you think I do, Hillman.”

Silence, in which breath wheezed.

“Well, can I?”

“Can you what?” Hillman said in near-despair.

“Can I trust you, Hillman?”

“You can trust me.”

Wheezing silence. The wheeze was in the man’s voice when he spoke again: “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Hillman. Okay. You’d probably like to talk all day about what a creep I am, but it’s time to get down to brass tacks. I want my money, and this isn’t ransom money, get that straight. Your son wasn’t kidnapped, he came to us of his own free will–”

“I don’t–” Hillman strangled the words in his throat.

“You don’t believe me? Ask him, if you ever have a chance. You’re throwing away your chances, you realize that? I’m trying to help you pay me the money – the information money, that’s all it is – but you keep calling me names, liar and creep and God knows what else.”

“No. There’s nothing personal.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Look here,” Hillman said. “You said it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Simply tell me where and when you want the money delivered. It will be delivered. I guarantee it.”