Ross MACDONALD - The Moving Target

“I’m not going to try to. They put me on to you and served their purpose. So let’s forget about the records and talk about something important.” I sat down in a wicker chair across the veranda from him.

“What do you want to talk about?” He still had perfect control. His puzzled smile was natural, and his voice was easy. Only his muscles gave him away, bunched at the shoulders, quivering in the thighs.

“Kidnapping,” I said. “We’ll leave the murder till later. Kidnapping is just about as serious in this state. I’ll give you my version of the kidnapping, and then I’ll listen to yours. A great many people will be eager to listen to yours.”

“Too bad. I haven’t any version.”

“I have. I’d have seen it sooner if I hadn’t happened to like you. You had more opportunity than anyone, and more motive. You resented Sampson’s treatment of you. You resented all the money he had. You hadn’t much yourself–”

“Still haven’t,” he said.

“You should be well fixed for the present. Half of the hundred thousand is fifty thousand. The very temporary present.”

He spread his hands humorously. “Am I carrying it with me?”

“You’re not that dull,” I said. “But you’re dull enough. You’ve acted like a rube, Taggert. The city slickers sucked you in and used you. You’ll probably never see your half of the hundred grand.”

“You promised me a story,” he said smoothly. He was going to be hard to break down.

I showed him my best card. “Eddie Lassiter phoned you the night before you flew Sampson out of Las Vegas.”

“Don’t tell me you’re psychic, Archer. You said the man was dead.” But there was a new white line around Taggert’s mouth.

“I’m psychic enough to tell you what you said to Eddie. You told him you’d be flying into Burbank about three o’clock the next day. You told him to rent a black limousine and wait for your phone call from the Burbank airport. When Sampson phoned the Valerio for a limousine, you canceled the call and sent for Eddie instead. The operator at the Valerio thought it was Sampson calling back. You do a pretty good imitation of him, don’t you?”

“Go on,” he said. “I’ve always been fond of fantasy.”

“When Eddie turned up at the front of the airport in the rented car, Sampson got in as a matter of course. He had no reason to suspect anything. You had him so drunk he wouldn’t notice the difference in drivers – so drunk that even a little guy like Eddie could handle him when they got to a private place. What did Eddie use on him, Taggert? Chloroform?”

“This is supposed to be your story,” he said. “Is your imagination getting tired?”

“The story belongs to both of us. That canceled telephone call was important, Taggert. It was the thing that tied you into the story in the first place. Nobody else could have known that Sampson was going to phone the Valerio. Nobody else knew when Sampson was going to fly in from Nevada. Nobody else was in a position to give Eddie the tip-off the night before. Nobody else could have made all the arrangements and run them off on schedule.”

“I never denied I was at the airport with Sampson. There were a few hundred other people there at the same time. You’re hipped on circumstantial evidence, like any other cop. And this business of the records isn’t even circumstantial evidence. It’s a circular argument. You haven’t got anything on Betty Fraley, and you haven’t proved any connection between us. Hundreds of collectors have her records.”

His voice was still cool and clear, bright with candor, but he was worried. His body was hunched and tense, as if I had forced him, into a narrow space. And his mouth was turning ugly.

“It shouldn’t be hard to prove a connection,” I said. “You must have been seen together at one time or another. And wasn’t it you that called her the other night when you saw me in the Valerio with Fay Estabrook? You weren’t really looking for Sampson at the Wild Piano, were you? You were going to see Betty Fraley. You put me off when you pulled Puddler out of my hair. I thought you were on my side. So much so that I put it down to stupidity when you fired at the blue truck. You were warning Eddie off, weren’t you, Taggert? I’d call you a smart boy if you hadn’t dirtied your hands with kidnapping and murder. Stupidity like that cancels out the smartness.”

“If you’re through calling me names,” he said, “well get down to business.”

He was still sitting quietly in the canvas chair, but his hand came up from beside him with a gun. It was the .32 target pistol I had seen before, a fight gun but heavy enough to make my stomach crawl.

“Keep your hands on your knees,” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d give up so easily.”

“I haven’t given up. I’m simply guaranteeing my freedom of action.”

“Shooting me won’t guarantee it. It’ll guarantee something else. Death by gas. Put your gun away and we’ll talk this over.”

“There’s nothing to talk over.”

“You’re wrong, as usual. What do you think I’m trying to do in this case?”

He didn’t answer. Now that the gun was in his hand, ready for violence, his face was smooth and relaxed. It was the face of a new kind of man, calm and unfrightened, because he laid no special value on human life. Boyish and rather innocent, because he could do evil almost without knowing it. He was the kind of man who had grown up and found himself in war.

“I’m trying to find Sampson,” I said. “If I can get him back, nothing else counts.”

“You’ve gone about it the wrong way, Archer. You forgot what you said last night: if anything happens to the people that kidnapped Sampson, it’s the end of him.”

“Nothing has happened to you – yet.”

“Nothing has happened to Sampson.”

“Where is he?”

“Where he won’t be found until I want him to be.”

“You have your money. Let him go.”

“I intended to, Archer. I was going to turn him loose today. But that will have to be postponed – indefinitely. If anything happens to me, it’s good-bye Sampson.”

“We can reach an understanding.”

“No,” he said. “I couldn’t trust you. We have to get clear away. Don’t you see that you’ve spoilt it? You have the power to spoil things, but you haven’t the power to guarantee that we’ll get clear. There’s nothing I can do with you but this.”

He glanced down at the gun, which was pointed at the middle of my body, then casually back at me. Any second he could shoot, without preparation, without anger. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

“Wait,” I said. My throat was tight. My skin felt desiccated, and I wanted to sweat. My hands were clutching my knees.

“We don’t want to stretch this out.” He stood up and moved toward me.

I shifted the weight of my body in the chair. One shot wouldn’t kill me, unless my luck was bad. Between the first and the second I could reach him. As I drew back my feet I talked rapidly.

“If you’ll give me Sampson, I can guarantee that I wont try to hold you and I won’t talk. You’ll have to take your chances with the others. Kidnapping is like other business enterprises: you have to take your chances.”

“I’m taking them,” he said, “but not on you.”

His rigid arm came up with the gun at the end like a hollow blue finger. I looked sideways, away from the direction I was going to move in. I was halfway out of the chair when the gun went off. Taggert was listless when I got to him. The gun slid out of his hand.

Another gun had spoken. Albert Graves was in the doorway with the twin of Taggert’s pistol in his hand. He poked the end of his little finger through a round hole in the screen.