Ross MACDONALD - The Moving Target

The stone-paved court was empty. Its walls were lined with closed wooden doors. I pressed the latch of the nearest. It opened into an oak-raftered room that contained a built-in bed covered with dirty blankets, a scarred iron trunk, unlabeled, a cheap cardboard wardrobe, and the sour-sweet smell of Claude.

“The odor of sanctity,” Miranda said, at my shoulder.

“Did your father actually stay here with Claude?”

“I’m afraid so.” She wrinkled her nose. “He takes this sun-worshipping nonsense seriously. It’s all tied up with astrology in his mind.”

“And he actually gave this place to Claude?”

“I don’t know if he deeded it to him. He handed it over for Claude to use as a temple. I suppose he’ll take it back sometime, if he can. And if he ever gets over this religious lunacy of his.”

“It’s a queer sort of hunting-lodge,” I said.

“It’s not really a hunting-lodge. He built it as a kind of hideout.”

“A hideout from what?”

“War. This dates from Ralph’s last phase, the pre-religious one. He was convinced that another war was just around the corner. This was to be his sanctuary if we were invaded. But he got over the fear last year, just before they started work on the bomb shelter. The plans for the shelter were all ready, too. He took refuge in astrology instead.”

“I didn’t use the word ‘lunacy,’” I said. “You did. Were you serious?”

“Not really.” She smiled a little bleakly. “Ralph doesn’t seem so crazy if you understand him. He felt guilty, I think, because he made money out of the last war. And then there was Bob’s death. Guilt can cause all sorts of irrational fears.”

“You read another book,” I said. “This time it was a psychology textbook.”

Her reaction was surprising. “You make me sick, Archer. Don’t you get bored with yourself playing the dumb detective?”

“Sure I get bored. I need something naked and bright. A moving target in the road.”

“You!” She bit her lip, flushed, and turned away.

We went from room to room, opening and closing the doors. Most of the rooms had beds in them and very little else. In the big living-room at the end there were five or six straw pallets on the floor. It was narrow-windowed and thick-walled like a fortress, and the air smelled like the tank of a county jail.

“The disciples live well, whoever they are. Did you see any when you were here before?”

“No. But I didn’t come inside.”

“Some people are suckers for a pitch like Claude’s. They’ll hand over everything they own and get nothing in return but a starvation diet and the prospect of a nervous breakdown. But I’ve never heard of a sun-worshippers’ monastery before. I wonder where the suckers are today.”

We finished our circuit of the court without seeing anyone. I looked up at the roof. Claude was sitting with his face to the sun, his naked back to us. The flesh hung down in heavy folds from his flanks and hips. His head was moving jerkily back and forth, as if he was arguing with someone, but no sound came from him. Like a bearded woman who knew two sexual worlds, the great eunuch back and head outlined by the sun were strange and ridiculous and dreadful.

Miranda touched my arm. “Speaking of lunacy–”

“He’s putting on an act,” I said, and half believed it. “At least he was telling the truth about your father. Unless he’s in one of the other buildings.”

We crossed the gravel yard to the adobe with the smoking chimney. I looked in through the open door. A girl with a shawl over her head was sitting on her heels in front of a glowing fireplace stirring a bubbling pot. It was a five-gallon pot, and it was full of what looked like beans.

“It looks as if the disciples are coming for supper.” Without moving her shoulders the girl turned her head to look at us. The whites of her eyes shone like porcelain in the clay-colored Indian face.

“Have you seen an old man?” I asked her in Spanish. She shrugged one calico shoulder in the general direction of the temple.

“Not that old man. One who is beardless. Beardless, fat, and rich. His name is Senor Sampson.”

She shrugged both shoulders and turned back to her steaming pot. Claude’s sandals crunched in the gravel behind us.

“I am not wholly alone, as you can see. There is my handmaiden, but she is little better than an animal. If you have done with us, perhaps you will permit me to return to my meditation. Sunset is approaching, and I must pay my respects to the departing god.”

Beside the adobe there was a galvanized iron shed with a padlocked door. “Before you go, open the shed.”

Sighing, he took some keys from the folds of his body cloth. The shed contained a pile of bags and cartons, most of which were empty. There were several sacks of beans, a case of condensed milk, some overalls and work boots in a few of the cartons.

Claude stood in the doorway watching me. “My disciples sometimes work in the valley by the day. Such work in the vegetable fields is a form of worship.”

He moved back to let me out. I noticed the imprint of a tire in the clay at the edge of the gravel where his foot had been. It was a wide truck tire. I’d seen the herringbone pattern of the tread before.

“I thought you didn’t let mechanical trappings come inside the fence?”

He peered at the ground and came up smiling. “Only when necessary. A truck delivered some provisions the other day.”

“I hope and trust it was purified?”

“The driver has been purified, yes.”

“Good. I suppose that you’ll be doing some housecleaning now that we’ve contaminated the place.”

“It is between you and the god.” With a backward glance at the declining sun he returned to his perch on the roof.

On the way back to the state highway I memorized the route so that I could drive it blind at night if I had to.

Before we crossed the valley the red sun had plunged behind the clouds over the coastal range. The shadowed fields were empty. We passed a dozen truckloads of field-workers returning to their bunkhouses on the ranches. Crammed like cattle in the rattling vans of the trucks, they stood in patient silence, men, women, and children waiting for food and sleep and the next day’s sunrise. I drove carefully, feeling a little depressed, stalled in the twilight period when day has run down and night hasn’t picked up speed.

The clouds flowed in the pass like a torrent of milk and preceded us down the other side of the mountain, blending with the gradual night and the deepening cold. Once or twice on a curve Miranda leaned against me, trembling. I didn’t ask her whether she was cold or afraid. I didn’t want to force her to make a choice.

The clouds had rolled down the mountain all the way to U.S. 101. From far up the pass road I could see the headlights on the highway blurred enormous by the fog. While I was waiting at the stop sign for a break in the highway traffic, a pair of bright lights came up fast from the direction of Santa Teresa. They suddenly swung toward us like wild eyes. The speeding car was going to try to turn into the pass road. Its brakes screamed, its rubber skittered and snarled. It wasn’t going to get past me.

“Head down,” I said to Miranda, and tightened my grip on the wheel.

The other driver straightened out, roared into second gear at forty-five or fifty, spun in front of my bumper, and passed on my right in the seven-foot space between me and the stop sign. I caught a flashing glimpse of the driver’s face, a thin, pale face jaundiced by my fog lights, under a peaked leather cap. His car was a dark limousine.

I backed and turned and started after it. The black-top was slick from the wet, and I was slow in getting under way. The red rear light hightailing up the road was swallowed by the fog. It was no use anyway. He could turn off on any one of the county roads that paralleled the highway. And perhaps the best thing I could do for Sampson was to let the limousine go. I stopped so fast that Miranda had to brace both hands on the dashboard. My reflexes were getting violent.