Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

Hillman’s voice was sharp. The man at the other end of the line reacted to sharpness perversely:

“Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m calling the shots, you better not forget it.”

“Then call them,” Hillman said.

“In my own good time. I think I better give you a chance to think this over, Hillman. Get down off your high horse and down on you knees. That’s where you belong.” He hung up.

Hillman was standing in the alcove with the receiver still in his hand when I got back to the sitting room. Absently he replaced it on its brackets and came toward me, shaking his silver head.

“He wouldn’t give me any guarantees about Tom.”

“I heard him. They never do. You have to depend on his mercy.”

“His mercy ! He was talking like a maniac. He seemed to revel in the– in the pain.”

“I agree, he was getting his kicks. Let’s hope he’s satisfied with the kicks he’s already got, and the money.”

Hillman’s head went down. “You think Tom is in danger, don’t you?”

“Yes. I don’t think you are dealing with an outright maniac, but the man didn’t sound too well-balanced. I think he’s an amateur, or possibly a petty thief who saw his chance to move in on the heavy stuff. More likely a gifted amateur. Is he the same man who called this morning?”

“Yes.”

“He may be working alone. Is there any chance that you could recognize his voice? There was some hint of a personal connection, maybe a grievance. Could he be a former employee of yours, for example?”

“I very much doubt it. We only employ skilled workers. This fellow sounded practically subhuman.” His face became gaunter. “And you tell me I’m at his mercy.”

“Your son is. Could there be any truth in what he said about Tom going to him voluntarily?”

“Of course not. Tom is a good boy.”

“How is his judgment?”

Hillman didn’t answer me, except by implication. He went to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink out of a bourbon bottle, and knocked it back. I followed him to the bar.

“Is there any possible chance that Tom cooked up this extortion deal himself, with the help of one of his buddies, or maybe with hired help?”

He hefted the glass in his hand, as if he was thinking of throwing it at my head. I caught a glimpse of his red angry mask before he turned away. “It’s quite impossible. Why do you have to torment me with these ideas?”

“I don’t know your son. You ought to.”

“He’d never do a thing like that to me.”

“You put him in Laguna Perdida School.”

“I had to.”

“Why?”

He turned on me furiously. “You keep hammering away at the same stupid question. What has it got to do with anything?”

“I’m trying to find out just how far gone Tom is. If there was reason to think that he kidnapped himself, to punish you or raise money, we’d want to turn the police loose–”

“You’re crazy!”

“Is Tom?”

“Of course not. Frankly, Mr. Archer, I’m getting sick of you and your questions. If you want to stay in my house, it’s got to be on my terms.”

I was tempted to walk out, but something held me. The case was getting its hooks into my mind.

Hillman filled his glass with whisky and drank half of it down.

“If I were you, I’d lay off the sauce,” I said. “You have decisions to make. This could be the most important day of your life.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

He reached across the bar and poured the rest of his whisky into the metal sink. Then he excused himself, and went upstairs to see to his wife.

I LET MYSELF out the front door, quietly, got a hat and raincoat out of the trunk of my car, and walked down the winding driveway. In the dead leaves under the oak trees the drip made rustling noises, releasing smells and memories. When I was seventeen I spent a summer working on a dude ranch in the foothills of the Sierra. Toward the end of August, when the air was beginning to sharpen, I found a girl, and before the summer was over we met in the woods. Everything since had been slightly anticlimactic.

Growing up seemed to be getting harder. The young people were certainly getting harder to figure out. Maybe Stella Carlson, if I could get to her, could help me understand Tom.

The Carlsons’ mailbox was a couple of hundred yards down the road. It was a miniature replica, complete with shutters, of their green-shuttered white colonial house, and it rubbed me the wrong way, like a tasteless advertisement. I went up the drive to the brick stoop and knocked on the door.

A handsome redheaded woman in a linen dress opened the door and gave me a cool green look.

“Yes?”

I didn’t think I could get past her without lying. “I’m in the insurance–”

“Soliciting is not allowed in El Rancho.”

“I’m not selling, Mrs. Carlson, I’m a claims adjuster.”

I got an old card out of my wallet, which supported the statement. I had worked for insurance companies in my time.

“If it’s about my wrecked car,” she said, “I thought that was all settled last week.”

“We’re interested in the cause of the accident. We keep statistics, you know.”

“I’m not particularly interested in becoming a statistic.”

“Your car already is. I understand it was stolen.”

She hesitated, and glanced behind her, as if there was a witness in the hallway. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was stolen.”

“By some young punk in the neighborhood, is that right?”

She hushed in response to my incitement. “Yes, and I doubt very much that it was an accident. He took my car and wrecked it out of sheer spite.”

The words boiled out as if they had been simmering in her mind for days.

“That’s an interesting hypothesis, Mrs. Carlson. May I come in and talk it over with you?”

“I suppose so.”

She let me into the hallway. I sat at a telephone table and took out my black notebook. She stood over me with one hand on the newel post at the foot of the stairs.

“Do you have anything to support that hypothesis?” I said with my pencil poised.

“You mean that he wrecked the car deliberately?”

“Yes.”

Her white teeth closed on her full red lower lip, and left a brief dent in it.

“It’s something you couldn’t make a statistic out of. The boy – his name is Tom Hillman – was interested in our daughter. He used to be a much nicer boy than he is now. As a matter of fact, he used to spend most of his free time over here. We treated him as if he were our own son. But the relationship went sour. Very sour.”

She sounded both angry and regretful.

“What soured it?”

She made a violent sideways gesture. “I prefer not to discuss it. It’s something an insurance company doesn’t have to know. Or anybody else.”

“Perhaps I could talk to the boy. He lives next door, doesn’t he?”

“His parents do, the Hillmans. I believe they’ve sent him away somewhere. We no longer speak to the Hillmans,” she said stiffly. “They’re decent enough people, I suppose, but they’ve made awful fools of themselves over that boy.”

“Where did they send him?”

“To some kind of reform school, probably. He needed it. He was running out of control.”

“In what way?”

“Every way. He smashed up my car, which probably means he was drinking. I know he was spending time in the bars on lower Main Street.”

“The night before he wrecked your car?”

“All summer. He even tried to teach his bad habits to Stella. That’s what soured the relationship, if you want to know.”

I made a note. “Could you be a little more specific, Mrs. Carlson? We’re interested in the whole social background of these accidents.”