Ross MACDONALD - The Moving Target

“I’m not talking,” she said.

“But if you decide to co-operate,” Troy went on smoothly, “to put the welfare of the group ahead of your selfish interest, I’m sure the group will be glad to help you in turn. We’ll take you out of the country tonight, in fact. You know that Luis and I can do that for you.”

“You wouldn’t do it,” she said. “I know you, Troy.”

“More intimately by the moment, dear. Take off her other shoe, Luis.”

Her body squirmed on the floor. I could hear its breathing. A dropped shoe rapped the floorboards. I calculated my chances of ending it there. But there were four of them, too many for one gun. And Betty Fraley had to come out alive.

Troy said: “Well test the plantar reflex, I think it’s called.”

“I don’t like this,” Fay said.

“Neither do I, my dear. I quite abhor it. But Betty is being most dreadfully obdurate.”

A moment of silence stretched out like membrane on the point of tearing. The screaming began again. When it ended I found that I had closed my teeth in the earth.

“Your plantar reaction is very fine,” Troy said. “It’s a pity that your tongue doesn’t work so well.”

“Will you let me go if I give it to you?”

“You have my word.”

“Your word!” She sighed horribly.

“I do wish you’d take it, Betty. I don’t enjoy hurting you, and you can’t possibly enjoy being hurt.”

“Let me up, then. Let me sit up.”

“Of course, my dear.”

“It’s in a locker in the bus station in Buenavista. The key is in my bag.”

As soon as I was out of sight of the house I began to run. When I reached my car the Buick was still standing at the end of the lane below me. I backed down the hill to the stone bridge and halfway up the grade on the other side. I waited for the Buick with one foot on the clutch and the other on the brake.

After a long while I heard its motor whining up the other side of the hill. I went into gear and moved ahead in low. Its chromium flashed in the sun at the top of the hill. I held the middle of the road and met it on the bridge. Brakes screeched above the bellow of the horn. The big car came to a stop five feet from my bumper. I was out of my seat before it stopped rolling.

The man called Luis glared at me over the wheel, his fat face twisted and shiny with anger. I opened the door on his side and showed him my gun. Beside him Fay Estabrook cried out in fury.

“Out!” I said.

Luis put one foot down and reached for me. I moved back. “Be careful. Hands on your head.”

He raised his hands and stepped into the road. An emerald ring flashed green on one of his fingers. His wide hips swayed under his cream gabardine suit. “You too, Fay. This side.” She came out, teetering on her high heels. “Now turn around.”

They rotated cautiously, watching me over their shoulders. I clubbed the gun and swung it to the base of Luis’s skull. He went down on his knees and collapsed softly on his face. Fay cowered away with her arms protecting her head. Her hat slipped forward dowdily over one eye. On the road her long shadow mocked her movements. “Put him in the back seat,” I said.

“You dirty little sneak!” she said. Then she said other things. The rouge stood out on her cheekbones. “Hurry.”

“I can’t lift him.”

“You have to.” I took a step toward her. She stooped awkwardly over the fallen man. He was inert, and heavy. With her hands in his armpits she raised the upper part of his body and dragged him to the car. I opened the door, and together we slung him into the back seat.

She stood up gasping for breath, the colors running in her face. The rustic stillness of the sun-filled canyon made a queer setting for what we were doing. I could see the two of us as if from a height, tiny foreshortened figures alone in the sun, with blood and money on our minds.

“Now give me the key.”

“The key?” She overdid her puzzled frown, making her face a caricature. “What key?”

“The key to the locker, Fay. Hurry.”

“I haven’t got any key.” But her gaze had flickered almost imperceptibly toward the front seat of the Buick.

There was a black suede purse on the seat. The key was in it. I transferred it to my wallet.

“Get in,” I said. “No, on the driver’s side. You’re going to do the driving.”

She did as I said, and I got in behind her. Luis was slumped in the far corner of the back seat. His eyes were partly open, but the pupils were turned up out of sight His face looked more than ever like dough.

“I can’t get past your car,” Fay said petulantly.

“You’re backing up the hill.”

She went into reverse gear with a jerk.

“Not so fast,” I said. “If we have an accident you won’t survive it.”

She cursed me, but she also slowed down. She backed cautiously up the hill and down the other side. At the entrance to the lane I told her to turn and drive down to the cottage.

“Slow and careful, Fay. No leaning on the horn. You wouldn’t be any good without a spinal column, and Geminis have no heart.”

I touched the back of her neck with the muzzle of my gun. She winced, and the car leaped forward. I rested my weight on Luis and lowered the rear window on the right side. The lane opened out in a small level clearing in front of the cottage.

“Turn left,” I said, “and stop in front of the door. Then set the emergency.”

The door of the cottage began to open inward. I ducked my head. When I raised it again, Troy was in the doorway, with his right hand, knuckles out, resting on the edge of the frame. I sighted and fired. At twenty feet I could see the mark the bullet made, like a fat red insect alighting, between the first and second knuckles of his right hand.

Before his left hand could move across his body for his gun he was immobile for an instant. Long enough for me to reach him and use the gun butt again. He sat down on the doorstep, with his silver head hanging between his knees.

The motor of the Buick roared behind me. I went after Fay, caught the car before she could turn it, and pulled her out by the shoulders. She tried to spit at me and slobbered on her chin.

“Well go inside,” I said. “You first.”

She walked almost drunkenly, stumbling on her heels. Troy had rolled out of the doorway and was curled on the shallow porch, perfectly still. We stepped over him.

The odor of burned flesh was still in the room. Betty Fraley was on the floor with Marcie at her throat, worrying her like a terrier. I pulled Marcie off. She hissed at me and drummed her heels on the floor, but she didn’t try to get up. I motioned to Fay with the gun to stand in the corner beside her.

Betty Fraley sat up, the breath whistling in her throat. Across one side of her face, from hairline to jawbone, four parallel scratches dripped blood. The other side of her face was yellowish white.

“You’re a pretty picture,” I said.

“Who are you?” Her voice was a flat caw. Her eyes were fixed.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of here before I have to kill these people.”

“That would be pleasant work,” she said. She tried to stand up and fell forward on hands and knees. “I can’t walk.”

I lifted her. Her body was light and hard as a dry stick. Her head hung loosely across my arm. I had the feeling that I was holding an evil child. Marcie and Fay were watching me from the corner. It seemed to me then that evil was a female quality, a poison that women secreted and transmitted to men like disease.

I carried Betty out to the car and sat her down in the front seat. I opened the back door, laid Luis out on the ground. There were suds on his thick blue lips, blown in and out by his shallow breathing.