Ross MACDONALD: The Moving Target

“I’d give you my autograph, only I sign it with an ‘X.’”

“Seriously, though, I’m interested in detectives. I thought I’d like to be one at one time – before I went up in a plane. I guess most kids dream about it.”

“Most kids don’t get stuck with the dream.”

“Why? Don’t you like your work?”

“It keeps me out of mischief. Let’s see, you were with Mr. Sampson when he dropped out of sight?”

“Right.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Sports clothes. Harris tweed jacket, brown wool shirt, tan slacks, brogues. No hat.”

“And when was this exactly?”

“About three-thirty – when we landed at Burbank yesterday afternoon. They had to move another crate before I could park the plane. I always put it away myself; it’s got some special gadgets we wouldn’t want stolen. Mr. Sampson went to call the hotel to send out a limousine.”

“What hotel?”

“The Valerio.”

“The pueblo off Wilshire?”

“Ralph keeps a bungalow there,” Miranda said. “He likes it because it’s quiet.”

“When I got out to the main entrance,” Taggert continued, “Mr. Sampson was gone. I didn’t think much about it. He’d been drinking pretty hard, but that was nothing unusual, and he could still look after himself. It made me a little sore, though. There I was stranded in Burbank, simply because he couldn’t wait five minutes. It’s a three-dollar taxi ride to the Valerio, and I couldn’t afford that.”

He glanced at Miranda to see if he was saying too much. She looked amused.

“Anyway,” he said, “I took a bus to the hotel. Three buses , about half an hour on each. And then he wasn’t there. I waited around until nearly dark, and then I flew the plane home.”

“Did he ever get to the Valerio?”

“No. He hadn’t been there at all.”

“What about his luggage?”

“He didn’t carry luggage.”

“Then he wasn’t planning to stay overnight?”

“It doesn’t follow,” Miranda put in. “He kept whatever he needed in the bungalow at the Valerio.”

“Maybe he’s there now.”

“No. Elaine’s been phoning every hour on the hour.”

I turned to Taggert. “Didn’t he say anything about his plans?”

“He was going to spend the night at the Valerio.”

“How long was he by himself when you were parking the plane?”

“Fifteen minutes or so. Not more than twenty.”

“The limousine from the Valerio would’ve had to get there pretty fast. He may never have called the hotel at all.”

“Somebody might have met him at the airport,” Miranda said.

“Did he have many friends in Los Angeles?”

“Business acquaintances mostly. Ralph’s never been much of a mixer.”

“Can you give me their names?”

She moved her hand in front of her face as if the names were insects. “You’d better ask Albert Graves. I’ll call his office and tell him, you’re coming. Felix will drive you in. And then I suppose you’ll be going back to Los Angeles.”

“It looks like the logical place to start.”

“Alan can fly you.” She stood up and looked down at him with a flash of half-learned imperiousness. “You’re not doing anything special this afternoon, are you, Alan?”

“Glad to,” he said. “It’ll keep me from getting bored.”

She switch-tailed into the house, a pretty piece in a rage.

“Give her a break,” I said.

He stood up and overshadowed me. “What do you mean?”

He had a trace of smugness, of high-school arrogance, and I needled it. “She needs a tall man. You’d make a handsome pair.”

“Sure, sure.” He wagged his head negatively from side to side. “More people jump to conclusions about me and Miranda.”

“Including Miranda?”

“I happen to be interested in somebody else. Not that it’s any of your business. Or that Goddamn eight ball’s either.”

He meant Felix, who was standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen. He suddenly disappeared.

“The bastard gets on my nerves,” Taggert said. “He’s always hanging around and listening in.”

“Maybe he’s just interested.”

He snorted. “He’s just one of the things that gripes me about this place. I eat with the family, yeah, but don’t think I’m not a servant when the chips are down. A bloody flying chauffeur.”

Not to Miranda, I thought, but didn’t say it “It’s an easy enough job, isn’t it? Sampson can’t be flying much of the time.”

“The flying doesn’t bother me. I like it. What I don’t like is being the old guy’s keeper.”

“He needs a keeper?”

“He can be hell on wheels. I couldn’t tell you about him in front of Miranda, but the last week in the desert you’d think he was trying to drink himself to death. A quart and a pint a day. When he drinks like that he gets delusions of grandeur, and I get sick of taking chicken from a lush. Then he goes sentimental. He wants to adopt me and buy an airline for me.” His voice went harsh and loose, in satiric mimicry of a drunk old man’s: “ ‘I’ll look after you, Alan boy. You’ll get your airline.’”

“Or a mountain?”

“I’m not kidding about the airline. He could do it, too. But he doesn’t give anything away when he’s sober. Not a thin dime.”

“Strictly schizo,” I said. “What makes him like that?”

“I wouldn’t know for sure. The bitch upstairs would drive anybody crazy. Then he lost a son in the war. That’s where I come in, I guess. He doesn’t really need a full-time pilot. Bob Sampson was a flier, too. Shot down over Sakashima. Miranda thinks that that’s what broke the old man up.”

“How does Miranda get along with him?”

“Pretty well, but they’ve been feuding lately. Sampson’s been trying to make her get married.”

“To anybody in particular?”

“Albert Graves.” He said it deadpan, neither pro nor con.

The highway entered Santa Teresa at the bottom of the town near the sea. We drove through a mile of slums: collapsing shacks and storefront tabernacles, dirt paths where sidewalks should have been, black and brown children playing in the dust. Nearer the main street there were a few tourist hotels with neon signs like icing on a cardboard cake, red-painted chili houses, a series of shabby taverns where the rumdums were congregating. Half the men in the street had short Indian bodies and morocco faces. After Cabrillo Canyon I felt like a man from another planet. The Cadillac was a space ship skimming just above the ground.

Felix turned left at the main street, away from the sea. The street changed as we went higher. Men in colored shirts and seersucker suits, women in slacks and midriff dresses displaying various grades of abdomen, moved in and out of California Spanish shops and office buildings. Nobody looked at the mountains standing above the town, but the mountains were there, making them all look silly.

Taggert had been sitting in silence, his handsome face a blank. “How do you like it?” he asked me.

“I don’t have to like it. How about you?”

“It’s pretty dead for my money. People come here to die, like elephants. But then they go on living – call it living.”

“You should have seen it before the war. It’s a hive of activity compared with what it was. There was nothing but the rich old ladies clipping coupons and pinching pennies and cutting the assistant gardener’s wages.”

“I didn’t know you knew the town.”

“I worked on a couple of cases with Bert Graves – when he was District Attorney.”

Felix parked in front of a yellow stucco archway that led into the courtyard of an office building. He opened the glass partition. “Mr. Graves’s office is on the second floor. You can take the elevator.”