Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (12 page)

 
          
“I
don’t believe it.”

 
          
“That’s
your privilege.” Padilla’s tone made it clear that he did believe it. “Then I
won’t bother going into the rest of it.”

 
          
“Is
there more?”

 
          
“Yeah.
I’ll give it to you if you want. It may be a lot of
crazy talk. Like I said, I hope it is. There must be some truth in it, though,
because it checks out.
This business about the kidnapping,
for instance.
Secundina got wind of it long ago. She didn’t know what
the job was going to be, neither did Gus. But it was going to be big—a lot of
money for everybody, enough to solve all their problems.” Padilla grinned
ironically.

 
          
“Who
all are involved?”

 
          
“She
doesn’t know that. Gus was one, of course. And this character Gaines. Gus knew
him from way back, met him in Preston years ago under another name.”

 
          
“What
name?”

 
          
“Secundina
doesn’t know. Gus didn’t tell her everything. Most of what she learned, she had
to pick up for herself. She did find out that Gaines was the leader, anyway
after Broadman broke with the gang. Broadman goofed some way, and the cops
threw a scare into him. He decided to pull in his horns. He didn’t want any
part of the big deal. Sexy says that’s why they killed him. He was ready to
turn State’s evidence against them.”

 
          
I
was losing my
scepticism
of Padilla’s story. It tied
in with some of the things I knew. A split between Gaines and Broadman would
account for Broadman’s handling of Ella Barker’s diamond ring.

 
          
“Does
Secundina admit that Gus killed Broadman?”

 
          
“No.
She claims that Gus was sent to take care of Broadman. Gaines told him to
gather up the loot in Broadman’s basement and knock the old boy off. But Gus
couldn’t go through with it. He’d never killed a man. He hit Broadman a couple
of times and beat it. She saw Gus right after, that same afternoon, and he was
ashamed of himself for chickening out. You get that? He was ashamed. She didn’t
make that up.”

 
          
“But
maybe he did.”

 
          
“Gus?
He’s—he was no better than a moron.”

 
          
“Then
he could have been mistaken about what happened. He may have struck Broadman a
fatal blow without knowing it.”

 
          
Padilla
said: “You’re sure Broadman wasn’t choked to death?”

 
          
“I’m
not sure, no. Why do you ask?”

 
          
“Secundina
thinks he was.”

 
          
“By Granada?”

 
          
“No
names mentioned,” Tony said. He wasn’t a timid man, but he looked frightened.
“I don’t know what to do about all this, Mr. Gunnarson.
I
been
carrying it around ever since she spilled it in my lap. It’s too
big for me to handle.”

 
          
“I’ll
talk to her. Where does she live?”

 
          
“In a court in lower town.”
He gave me the address, and I
wrote it down.

 
          
Tony
got out and looked up at the sky. A high jet was cutting white double tracks
across it, towing along them at a distance rattling loads of sound. Ferguson’s
telephone rang, like a tiny protest.

 
          
I
started for the service entrance. Padilla was there ahead of me, blocking my
way.

 
          
“What’s
the matter with you?”

 
          
He
answered me quietly. “It’s his baby, Mr. Gunnarson. Let him handle it.”

 
          
“You
think he’s qualified?”

 
          
“As
much as anybody is, I guess.”

 
          
Padilla
flicked his twisted ear with a fingertip and held his hand outspread beside his
face. Ferguson’s voice was a murmur far inside the house; then almost a shout:
“Holly! Is that you, Holly?”

 
          
“
My gosh
, he’s talking to her,” Padilla said.

 
          
He’d
forgotten his intention of keeping me out. We went in together. Ferguson met us
in the central hallway. His weathered face was broken with joy. “I talked to
her. She’s alive and well, and she’ll be home today.”

 
          
“Not
kidnapped, after all?” I said.

 
          
“Oh,
they’re holding her, all right.” He seemed to consider this a minor detail.
“But they haven’t mistreated her. She told me so herself.”

 
          
“You’re
sure it was your wife you talked to?”

 
          
“Absolutely certain.
I couldn’t be mistaken about her
voice.”

 
          
“Was
it a local call?”

 
          
“So far as I could tell.”

 
          
“Who
else did you talk to?” Padilla said.

 
          
“A
man—one of her captors. I didn’t recognize his voice. But it doesn’t matter.
They’re releasing her.”

 
          
“Without ransom?”

 
          
He
looked at me with displeasure. In the relief of hearing from his wife, he
didn’t want to be reminded of obstacles to her return. Relief like that, I
thought, was very close to despair.

 
          
“I’m
paying the ransom,” he said in a flat voice. “I’m glad to do it.”

 
          
“When
and where?”

 
          
“With
your permission, I’ll keep my instructions to myself. I have a schedule to
meet.”

 
          
He
turned with awkward haste and walked a rather erratic course to his bedroom. It
was large, with an open blue fall to the sea from one window; and so austerely
furnished that it seemed empty. There were photographs of his wife on the walls
and the bare surfaces of the furniture, and several of the
Colonel
himself. He lounged with raw-boned rakishness in battle dress, under a hat like
a pancake. He stood on his hands on a pair of parallel bars. One photograph
showed him standing straight and alone against a flat prairie landscape under
an empty sky.

 
          
“What
are you doing in here, Gunnarson?”

 
          
“Are
you sure that phone call wasn’t phony?”

 
          
“How
could it be? I spoke directly to Holly.”

 
          
“It
wasn’t a tape you heard?”

 
          
“No.”
He considered this. “What she said was responsive to what I said.”

 
          
“Why
would she co-operate with them?”

 
          
“Because
she wants to come home, of course,” he said with a large, stark smile. “Why
shouldn’t she co-operate? She knows that I don’t care about the money. She
knows how much I love her.”

 
          
“Sure
she does,” Padilla said from the doorway, and beckoned me with his head.

 
          
There
were feelings in the air, like
a complex
electricity,
which I didn’t understand. Moving jerkily,
galvanically
,
Ferguson went to a wall mirror and started to take off his shirt. His fingers
fumbled at the buttons. In a rage of impatience, he tore it off with both
hands. Buttons struck the glass like tiny bullets.

 
          
Ferguson’s
reflected face was gaunt. He saw me watching him, and met my gaze in the
mirror. His eyes were old and stony, his forehead steaming with sweat. “I warn
you. If you do anything to interfere with her safe return, I’ll kill you, I
have killed men.”

 
          
He
said it without turning, to his reflection and me.

 
          
I
DROVE UNDER THE COLISEUM
arches
of the overpass and
through an area of
truckyards
and lumberyards. The
air smelled of fresh-cut wood and burned diesel oil. Along the high wire fences
of the trucking firms, against the blank walls of the building-materials
warehouses, dark men leaned in the sun. I turned up Pelly Street.

 
          
The
court where the Donato family lived was a collection of board-and-batten houses
which resembled
chickenhouses
, built on three sides
of a dusty patch of ground at the end of an alley. A single Cotoneaster tree,
which can grow anywhere, held its bright red berries up to the sun. In the
tree’s long straggling shade a swarm of children played gravely in the dust.

 
          
They
were pretending to be Indians. Half of them probably were, if you traced their
blood lines. An old woman with a seamed Indian face overlooked them from the
doorstep of one of the huts.

 
          
She
pretended not to see me. I was the wrong color and I had on a business suit and
business suits cost money and where did the money come from?
The
sweat of the poor.

 
          
I
said: “Is Mrs. Donato here? Secundina Donato?”

 
          
The
old woman didn’t raise her eyes or answer me. She was as still as a lizard in
my shadow. Behind me the children had fallen silent. Through the open doorway
of the hut, I could hear a woman’s voice softly singing a lullaby in Spanish.

 
          
“Secundina
lives here, doesn’t she?”

 
          
The
old woman moved her shoulders. The shrug was almost imperceptible under her
rusty black shawl. A young woman holding a baby appeared in the doorway. She
had Madonna eyes and a mournful drooping mouth which was beautiful until it
spoke. “What are you looking for, Mister?”

 
          
“Secundina
Donato. Do you know her?”

 
          
“Secundina
is my sister. She isn’t here.”

 
          
“Where
is she?”

 
          
“I
dunno
. Ask her.” She looked down at the silent old
woman on the doorstep.

 
          
“She
won’t give me an answer. Doesn’t she understand English?”

 
          
“She
understands it, all right, but she ain’t talking today. One of her boys got
shot last night. I guess you know that, Mister.”

 
          
“Yes.
I want to talk to Secundina about her husband.”

 
          
“Are
you a policeman?”

 
          
“I’m
a lawyer. Tony Padilla sent me here.”

 
          
The
old woman spoke in husky, rapid Spanish. I caught Padilla’s name, and
Secundina’s
, and that was all.

 
          
“You
a friend of Tony Padilla?” the young woman said.

 
          
“Yes.
What does she say?”

 
          
“Secundina
went to the hospital.”

 
          
“Is
she hurt?”

 
          
“Her
Gus is there in the morgue.”

 
          
“What
did she say about Tony Padilla?”

 
          
“Nothing.
She says Secundina should have married him.”

 
          
“Married Tony?”

 
          
“That’s
what she says.”

 
          
The
old woman was still talking, head down,
her
gaze in
the dust between her cracked black shoes.

 
          
“What
else does she say?”

 
          
“Nothing.
She says a woman is a fool to go to the hospital.
Nobody ain’t
gonna
make her. The hospital is where
you die, she says. Her sister is a
medica
.”

 
          
I
started for the hospital, but got waylaid by the thought of other things I
should do. My first duty was to Ella Barker. She was starting her third day in
jail, and I’d promised to try and have her bail reduced. While I didn’t have
too much hope of accomplishing this, I had to make the attempt.

 
          
My
timing was good. It was just eleven by the courthouse clock, and when I entered
the courtroom, the court was taking a recess. The jury box was half full of
prisoners, which meant that the break would be a short one. The prisoners were
handcuffed together in pairs. They sat stolid and mute under the guard of an
armed bailiff. Most of them looked like the men who leaned on the walls and
fences off Pelly Street.

 
          
Judge
Bennett came in from his chambers, trailing his black robe. I caught his eye,
and he nodded. The judge was an impressive man in his sixties. He reminded me
of my grandmother’s Calvinist God, minus the beard and plus a sense of humor.
The judge’s sense of humor didn’t show in court. Whenever I made the trek
across the well of the old high-ceilinged courtroom up to the bench, I had to
fight off the feeling that it was judgment day and my sins had found me out.

 
          
The
judge leaned sideways to speak to me, as if to detach
himself
from the majesty of the law. “Good morning. How is Sally?”

 
          
“Very well.
Thank you.”

 
          
“She
must be approaching the end of her term.”

 
          
“Any day now.”

 
          
“Good
for her. I like to see nice people having children.” His wise, experienced gaze
rested on my face. “You’re showing the tension, William.”

 
          
“It
isn’t Sally I’m concerned about at the moment. It’s the young Barker woman.” I
hesitated. “Mr. Sterling ought to hear what I have to say, Your Honor.”

 
          
Keith
Sterling, the D.A., was sitting at the prosecution table on the right, his
iron-gray head bent over a stack of papers. The judge called him up to the
bench, and resumed his upright posture.

 
          
I
went on: “It seems unjust to me that Ella Barker should have to remain in jail.
I’m strongly convinced that her involvement in these burglaries was innocent.
The stolen property she received came to her as a gift. Her only real fault was
gullibility, which hardly seems grounds for punishment.”

 
          
“She
isn’t being punished,” Sterling said. “She’s simply being held for due
disposition.”

 
          
“The
fact remains that she’s in jail.”

 
          
“I
set bail, Mr. Gunnarson,” the judge said.

 
          
“But isn’t five thousand dollars rather high?”

 
          
“Not
in our opinion,” Sterling said. “It’s a serious crime she’s charged with.”

 
          
“I
mean it’s high in the sense that she can’t possibly make it. She has no family,
no savings,
no
property—”

 
          
The
judge cut me short: “I don’t have time to hear further argument now.” He
hitched his black robe up with one shoulder. The clerk, who had been watching
for this signal, called court back into session.

 
          
Sterling
said to me in an undertone: “Take it up with Joe Reach, Bill. I think he wants
to talk to you, anyway.”

 
          
Joe
was in his office on the second floor of the courthouse. He sat behind a desk
littered with papers and law books with markers in them. He was the D.A.’s
wheelhorse
, and the Barker case would be one of a score
that he was currently concerned with.

 
          
He
let me wait for a minute,
then
gave me the
up-from-under look that he used on hostile witnesses.
“Rough
night, Bill?
You look
hungover
.”

 
          
“Not
from drinking, that’s for sure.
From thinking.”

 
          
“Sit
down. You still all roused up about the Barker girl? She must have a nest egg
hidden away.”

 
          
“I’m
glad you brought that up. She’s broke. Five thousand dollars is high bail for a
girl with no resources. A first offender
who
isn’t
even guilty.”

 
          
“So
you keep saying. We differ. Judge Bennett set bail, anyway.”

 
          
“I
believe he’ll lower it if you people don’t object.”

 
          
“But
we do object.” Reach opened a drawer, produced a chocolate and almond bar,
unwrapped
it, broke it in two pieces, and handed me the
smaller piece. “
Here.
For energy.
We can’t have her jumping bail with murder in the picture. My advice to you is,
leave it lay. Open up the question of bail, and you could get it raised.”

 
          
“That
sounds like persecution to me.”

 
          
Reach
munched at me ferociously. “I’m sorry you said that, Bill. She’s wormed her way
into your sympathies, hasn’t she?
Too bad.
You’ve got
to learn not to take these things so seriously.”

 
          
“I
take everything seriously. That’s why I don’t get along with frivolous people
like you.”

 
          
Reach
looked pained. He was about as frivolous as the Supreme Court. “It strikes me
I’m taking quite a lot from you this morning. Put the needle away, and do some
more of your famous thinking. Try to look at the whole picture. Ella Barker’s
boy-friend was the leading spirit in a burglary gang, and worse than that. But
she won’t talk about him. She won’t co-operate in helping us find him.”

 
          
“She’s
co-operated fully, with all she knows. And incidentally, he wasn’t her
boy-friend once she got a line on him.”

 
          
“Why
didn’t she come to us, then?”

 
          
“She
was afraid to. Nothing in law obliges people to run to you with everything they
find out.” I heard what I said, and became obscurely aware that I was defending
myself as well as Ella Barker.

 
          
“She
would have saved us all a lot of trouble, not to mention herself.”

 
          
“So
you’re punishing her.”

 
          
“We’re
not planning to give her a good citizenship award, that’s for sure.”

 
          
“I
say it’s cruel and unusual punishment—”

 
          
“Save
that for the courtroom.”

 
          
“What
courtroom? The calendar’s so
full,
she won’t be
brought to trial for at least two weeks. Meantime she rots in jail.”

 
          
“Is
she willing to take a lie-detector test? That’s not just my question. The
reporters are asking it.”

 
          
“Since
when are you letting the newspapers do your thinking for you?”

 
          
“Don’t
get warm now, Bill. This is an important case. It affects a lot of people in
town, not just your one little client. If she could give us a lead to Gaines—”

 
          
“All right.
I’ll try her again. But I’m sure you’re barking
up the wrong tree.”