Росс Макдональд - The Chill

“Two or three dozen, anyway. It’s better to have too many than too few.”

“That will run into money.”

“I know, and so will I.”

“Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job?”

“I don’t need the work, and I could use a rest.”

“To hell with you then.”

He snatched at the flimsy picture between my fingers. It tore across the middle. We faced each other like enemies, each of us holding a piece of the happy honeymooners.

Alex burst into tears.

I agreed over lunch to help him find his wife. That and the chicken pot pie calmed him down. He couldn’t remember when he had eaten last, and he ate ravenously.

We drove out to the Surf House in separate cars. It was on the sea at the good end of town: a pueblo hotel whose Spanish gardens were dotted with hundred-dollar-a-day cottages. The terraces in front of the main building descended in wide green steps to its own marina. Yachts and launches were bobbing at the slips. Further out on the water, beyond the curving promontory that gave Pacific Point its name, white sails leaned against a low gray wall of fog.

The desk clerk in the Ivy League suit was very polite, but he wasn’t the one who had been on duty on the Sunday I was interested in. That one had been a summer replacement, a college boy who had gone back to school in the East. He himself, he regretted to say, knew nothing about Mrs. Kincaid’s bearded visitor or her departure.

“I’d like to talk to the hotel photographer. Is he around today?”

“Yes, sir. I believe he’s out by the swimming pool.”

We found him, a thin spry man wearing a heavy camera like an albatross around his neck. Among the colored beach clothes and bathing costumes, his dark business suit made him look like an undertaker. He was taking some very candid pictures of a middle-aged woman in a Bikini who didn’t belong in one. Her umbilicus glared at the camera like an eyeless socket.

When he had done his dreadful work, the photographer turned to Alex with a smile. “Hi. How’s the wife?”

“I haven’t seen her recently,” Alex said glumly.

“Weren’t you on your honeymoon a couple of weeks ago? Didn’t I take your picture?”

Alex didn’t answer him. He was peering around at the poolside loungers like a ghost trying to remember how it felt to be human. I said:

“We’d like to get some copies made of that picture you took. Mrs. Kincaid is on the missing list, and I’m a private detective. My name is Archer.”

“Fargo. Simmy Fargo.” He gave me a quick handshake, and the kind of glance a camera gives you when it records you for posterity. “In what sense on the missing list?”

“We don’t know. She left here in a taxi on the afternoon of September the second. Kincaid has been looking for her ever since.”

“That’s tough,” Fargo said. “I suppose you want the prints for circularization. How many do you think you’ll be needing?”

“Three dozen?”

He whistled, and slapped himself on his narrow wrinkled forehead. “I’ve got a busy weekend coming up, and it’s already started. This is Friday. I could let you have them by Monday. But I suppose you want them yesterday?”

“Today will do.”

“Sorry.” He shrugged loosely, making his camera bob against his chest.

“It could be important, Fargo. What do you say we settle for a dozen, in two hours?”

“I’d like to help you. But I’ve got a job.” Slowly, almost against his will, he turned and looked at Alex. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call the wife in, and you can have your pictures. Only don’t stand me up, the way the other one did.”

“What other one?” I said.

“Big guy with a beard. He ordered a print of the same picture and never came back for it. I can let you have that print now if you like.”

Alex came out of his dark trance. He took hold of Fargo’s arm with both hands and shook it. “You saw him then. Who is he?”

“I thought maybe you knew him.” Fargo disengaged himself and stepped back. “As a matter of fact, I thought I knew him, too. I could have sworn I took his picture once. But I couldn’t quite place the face. I see too many faces.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“He must have. I don’t take orders without a name. I’ll see if I can find it for you, eh?”

We followed him into the hotel and through a maze of corridors to his small cluttered windowless office. He phoned his wife, then burrowed into the pile of papers on his desk and came up with a photographer’s envelope. Inside, between two sheets of corrugated paper, was a glossy print of the newlyweds. On the front of the envelope Fargo had written in pencil: “Chuck Begley, Wine Cellar.”

“I remember now,” he said. “He told me he was working at the Wine Cellar. That’s a liquor store not too far from here. When Begley didn’t claim his picture I called them. They said Begley wasn’t working for them any more.” Fargo looked from me to Alex. “Does the name Begley mean anything to you?”

We both said that it didn’t. “Can you describe him, Mr. Fargo?”

“I can describe the part of him that wasn’t covered with seaweed, I mean the beard. His hair is gray, like the beard, and very thick and wavy. Gray eyebrows and gray eyes, an ordinary kind of straight nose, I noticed it was peeling from the sun. He’s not bad-looking for an older man, apart from his teeth, which aren’t good. And he looks as though he’s taken a beating or two in his time. Personally I wouldn’t want to go up against him. He’s a big man, and he looks pretty rough.”

“How big?”

“Three or four inches taller than I am. That would make him six feet one or two. He was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt, and I noticed the muscles in his arms.”

“How did he talk?”

“Nothing special. He didn’t have a Harvard accent, and he didn’t say ain’t.”

“Did he give you any reason for wanting the picture?”

“He said he had a sentimental interest. He saw it in the paper, and it reminded him of somebody. I remember thinking he must have dashed right over. The paper with the picture in it came out Sunday morning, and he came in around Sunday noon.”

“He must have gone to see your wife immediately afterward,” I said to Alex. And to Fargo: “How did this particular picture happen to be used by the newspaper?”

“They picked it out of a batch I sent over. The Press often uses my pictures, as a matter of fact I used to work for them. Why they used this one instead of some of the others I couldn’t say.” He held up the print in the fluorescent light, then handed it to me. “It did turn out well, and Mr. Kincaid and his wife make an attractive couple.”

“Thanks very much,” Alex said sardonically.

“I was paying you a compliment, fellow.”

“Sure you were.”

I took the print from Fargo and shunted Alex out of the place before it got too small for him. Black grief kept flooding up in him, changing to anger when it reached the air. It wasn’t just grief for a one-day wife, it was also grief for himself. He didn’t seem to know if he was a man or not.

I couldn’t blame him for his feelings, but they made him no asset to the kind of work I was trying to do. When I found the Wine Cellar, on a motel strip a few blocks inland, I left him outside in his little red sports car.

The interior of the liquor store was pleasantly cool. I was the only potential customer, and the man behind the counter came out from behind it to greet me.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

He wore a plaid waistcoat, and he had the slightly muzzy voice and liquid eyes and dense complexion of a man who drank all day and into the night.