Ross MACDONALD - The Moving Target

“I said I didn’t.”

“But you know who does.”

She sat down on the bed. “I don’t know a damn thing. I told you that.”

“Eddie didn’t do it by himself. He must have had a partner.”

“He did it by himself. If he didn’t – would you take me for a squealer? Do I go to work for the cops after what they done to Eddie?”

I sat down in the barrel chair and lit a cigarette. “I’ll tell you a funny thing. I was there when Eddie was shot. There wasn’t a cop within two miles, unless you count me.”

“You killed him?” she said thinly.

“I did not. He stopped on a side road to pass the money to another car. It was a cream-colored convertible. It had a woman in it. She shot him. Where would that woman be now?”

Her eyes were glistening like wet brown pebbles. The red tip of her tongue moved across her upper lip and shifted to her lower lip. “Ever since she was on the white stuff,” she said to herself. “They allus hate us vipers.”

“Are you going to sit and take it, Marcie? Where is she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Betty Fraley,” I said.

After a long silence she repeated: “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

I left her sitting on the bed and drove back to The Corner. I parked in the parking lot and lowered the sun screen over the windshield. She knew my face but not my car.

For half an hour the road from White Beach was empty. Then a cloud of dust appeared in the distance, towed by a green A-model sedan. Before the car turned south toward Los Angeles I caught a glimpse of a highly painted face, a swirl of gray fur, an aggressively tilted hat with a bright-blue feather. Clothes and cosmetics and half an hour alone had done a lot for Marcie.

Two or three other cars went by before I turned into the highway. The A-model’s top speed was under fifty, and it was easy to keep in sight. Driving slow on a hot day, down a highway I knew too well, the only trouble I had was staying awake. I narrowed the distance between us as we approached Los Angeles and the traffic increased.

The A-model left the highway at Sunset Boulevard and went through Pacific Palisades without a pause. It labored and trailed dark-blue oil smoke on the hills below the Santa Monica Mountains. On the edge of Beverly Hills it left the boulevard suddenly and disappeared.

I followed it up a winding road lined on both sides with hedges. The A-model was parked behind a laurel hedge in the entrance to a gravel drive. In the instant of passing I saw Marcie crossing the lawn toward a deep brick porch screened with oleanders. She seemed to be thrust forward and hustled along by a deadly energy.

I turned at the next drive and parked on the shoulder of the road, waiting for a signal to break the suburban peace. The seconds piled up precariously like a tower of poker chips.

I had the car door open and one foot in the road when the Ford engine coughed. I drew in my leg and crouched down behind the wheel. The Ford engine roared and went into gear, then died away. A deeper sound took its place, and the black Buick backed out of the drive. A man I didn’t know was at the wheel. The eyes in his fleshy face were like raisins stuck in unbaked dough. Marcie was beside him in the front seat. Gray hearselike curtains were drawn over the rear windows.

At the boulevard the Buick turned back toward the sea. I followed as closely as I dared. Between Brentwood and Pacific Palisades it went off to the right, up a climbing road that led into a canyon. I had the feeling that there wasn’t much mileage left in the Sampson case. We were coming into a narrow place for the end.

The road was cut in the western wall of the canyon. Below its unfenced edge was a tangle of underbrush. Above the road to my left a scattering of houses stood in roughly cleared patches. The houses were new and raw-looking. The opposite slope was scrub-oak-wilderness.

From the top of a rise I caught a glimpse of the Buick climbing over the crest of the next hill. I accelerated on the downhill grade, crossed a narrow stone bridge that spanned a dry barranca , and climbed the hill after it. It was moving slowly down the other side, like a heavy black beetle feeling its way in unfamiliar territory. A rutted lane branched off to the right. The beetle paused and followed it.

I parked behind a tree, which half hid my car from below, and watched the Buick diminish down the lane. When it was no larger than an actual beetle, it stopped in front of a yellow matchbox house. A matchstick woman with a black head came out of the house. Two men and two women got out of the car and surrounded her. All five went into the house like a single insect body with many legs.

I left my car and climbed down through the underbrush to the dry river bed at the bottom of the canyon. It wound among boulders from which small lizards scampered as I came near. The gnarled trees along the bank hid me from the yellow house until I was directly behind it. It was an unpainted wooden shack with its rear end resting on short field-stone columns.

Inside it a woman screamed, very loudly, again and again. The screams raked at my nerves, but I was grateful for them. They covered the noises I made climbing the bank and crawling under the house. The screaming died away after a while. I lay flat and listened to scrabbling movements on the floor above me. The silence under the house seemed to be crouched and waiting for another scream. I smelled new pine, damp earth, my own sour sweat.

A soft voice began to talk over my head. “You don’t quite understand the circumstances. You seem to feel that our motive is pure sadism or simple revenge. Certainly if we were inclined to harbor vengeful motives, we might feel that your conduct had justified them.”

“Tie a can to it, for Christ’s sake!” said Mrs. Estabrook’s voice. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“I’ll make my point if you don’t mind. My point is, Betty, that you’ve acted very badly. Without consulting me, you went into business for yourself, a thing I seldom approve in my employees. To make matters worse, you made an incautious choice of enterprise and failed in it. The police are looking for you now, and for me and Fay and Luis as well. Furthermore, you chose a valuable associate of mine as the victim of your wretched little plot. And to cap the climax you showed yourself devoid, not only of esprit de corps , but of sisterly affection. You shot and killed your brother Eddie Lassiter.”

“We know you swallowed the dictionary,” Fay Estabrook said. “Get on with it, Troy.”

“I didn’t kill him.” The whine of a hurt cat.

“You’re a liar,” yapped Marcie.

Troy raised his voice. “Be quiet, all of you. We’re going to let bygones be bygones, Betty–”

“I’m going to kill her if you don’t,” Marcie said.

“Nonsense, Marcie. You’ll do exactly as I say. We have a chance to recoup, and we won’t allow our more primitive passions to destroy it. Which brings us to the occasion of this pleasant little party, doesn’t it, Betty? I don’t know where the money is, but of course I am going to. And when I do, you’ll have bought your absolution, so to speak.”

“She ain’t fit to live,” Marcie said. “I swear I’ll kill her if you don’t.”

Fay laughed contemptuously. “You haven’t got the guts, dearie. You wouldn’t have called us in if you had the guts to tackle her yourself.”

“Hold your tongue, both of you.” Troy lowered his voice to a gentle monotone again. “You know I can handle Marcie, don’t you, Betty? I think you know by now I can handle even you. You might just as well come clean, I think. Otherwise you’ll suffer rather terribly. You may never walk again, in fact, I think I can promise you that you never shall.”