Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (27 page)

 
          
“It’s
all right, I’m not hurt. I know things never worked out for you. I’m sorry.”

 
          
She
put her arms around him. His face went like a child’s to her breasts. She
stroked his dusty gray hair and looked at me serenely from a standpoint beyond
grief.

 
          
“You
shouldn’t lap up so much liquor,” she said. “It isn’t good for you, Jim. Now go
to bed like a good boy, you’ll feel better in the morning.”

 
          
He
stumbled in my direction. His eyes came up to my face, with a flash of the
unquenchable anger that kept him almost young. But he went out without
speaking.

 
          
The
woman smoothed her dress down over her bosom. Except that her eyes were a
little darker, the scene had not affected her.

 
          
“Dotery
is a hard man to live with,” she said. “Lucky for me I’m easygoing myself. Live
and let live is my motto. You start pushing too hard, and what happens?
Everything goes to pieces in a nutshell.”

 
          
I
didn’t quite follow the sentence, but it seemed appropriate. “You were going to
show me some pictures, Mrs. Dotery.”

 
          
“So
I was.”

 
          
She
took a handful of pictures from the carton and shuffled them like a fortune
teller’s deck. With a sudden gleeful smile she handed me one of them. “Guess
who that is.”

 
          
It
was an old snapshot of a girl just entering adolescence. Her budding figure
showed through her white tulle dress. She was holding a broad white hat by its
ribbon, and smiling into the sun.

 
          
“It’s
your daughter Hilda, isn’t it?”

 
          
“Nope,”
she said. “It’s me, taken back in Boston thirty years ago, the Sunday I was
confirmed. I was a good-looker for a kid, if I do say it myself. Hilda and June
took after me.”

 
          
The
rest of the pictures illustrated this, and removed any possible doubt that
Holly May was Mrs. Dotery’s daughter. She said nostalgically: “We used to
pretend we
was
sisters, me and the two oldest girls,
until the trouble started in the family.”

 
          
The
trouble in the family had not yet ended. Dotery called through the wall in a
voice that trembled with self-pitying rage: “You
gonna
stay up all night? I got to get up in the morning and work, even if you don’t.
Come to bed now, hear me?”

 
          
“I
guess I got to go,” she said. “He’ll be out of there in a minute, and God knows
what will happen. Anyway, Hilda’s a lovely kid to look at, isn’t she?”

 
          
“So
were you.”

 
          
“Thank
you, sir.”

 
          
Dotery
raised his voice. “Do you hear me? Come to bed!”

 
          
“I
hear you. I’m coming, Jim.”

 
          
DOWNSTAIRS
IN THE STREET, I found a public telephone booth outside a drugstore that was
closed for the night. I stepped inside the glass cubicle and placed a collect
call to my home in
Buenavista
. After repeated ringing,
the operator said: “Your party does not answer, sir. Do you wish me to try
again later?”

 
          
Fear
stabbed me, twisting and turning into guilt. In the last few weeks Sally had
given up going out at night. It was unlikely that she was visiting the neighbors
at this hour. The
Perrys
and our other neighbors were
all early risers.

 
          
“Do
you wish me to try again later, sir?”

 
          
“Yes.
I’m in a public booth. I’ll call again in a few minutes.”

 
          
I
hung up and looked at my watch. It was just a few minutes short of midnight. Of
course, Sally was asleep. She’d been sleeping heavily lately. The bedroom door
was shut, and she hadn’t heard the phone.

 
          
Then
I remembered that Mrs. Weinstein was supposed to be there with her. Death in
his distorting mask slipped into the booth, to my right and a little behind me,
just outside the angle of my vision. When I turned to look at him, he moved
further behind me.

 
          
I
tried my home number again. No answer. I called the
Buenavista
police, but the line was busy. I opened the door of the booth to breathe.
Laughter and music came in gusts from the bar across the street. Bide-a-Wee,
its
flashing red neon said.

 
          
To
hell with biding, I said to myself.
To hell with Mountain
Grove and its broken pasts, to hell with the Ferguson case.
I wanted no
part of it. The only thing I wanted was Sally safe in my arms. I could be home
in an hour if I drove fast.

 
          
I
ran back to my car and started the engine. But the case wouldn’t let me go. A
man said behind me, under the engine’s roar: “Keep your hands where I can see
them, Gunnarson.
On the wheel.
I have a gun pointed at
the back of your head.”

 
          
I
turned and saw his face in alternating reddish light and reddish darkness. It
was secret and handsome in the half-light, with liquid-glinting eyes and metal-glinting
hair. I recognized Haines from his photograph.

 
          
He
was crouching in the space between the seats with my car blanket over his
shoulders. He lifted his hand from under the robe and showed me a heavy
revolver. “I’ll use this if I have to. Bear it in mind.”

 
          
There
was no real menace in his voice, no feeling of any kind. Its emptiness was the
alarming thing. It was the voice of the man from space who owed no human
allegiance anywhere. Harry
Haines,
self-conceived out
of nothing, a fatherless man with a gun, trying to steal reality for himself.

 
          
I
could feel his breath on the side of my neck. It made me angrier than a blow
would have. “Get out of my car. Go back to one of your women, Harry—Larry.
Snuggle up under a skirt, you won’t feel so anxious.”

 
          
“Why,
damn you,” he said. “I’ll kill you!”

 
          
“Mother
wouldn’t like it.”

 
          
“You
keep my mother out of this. You had no right to force your way into her house.
She’s a respectable woman—”

 
          
“That’s
right,
she wouldn’t like it if you shot me. Right here
in Mountain Grove, the scene of your early triumphs. Local boy makes good,
again.”

 
          
“I’m
doing better than you are, Gunnarson.”

 
          
His
voice was painfully high. He didn’t take pressure well. I gave him another
notch of it. “Sure, as a two-bit gunman you’re doing fine. I have about seven
dollars in my wallet. You’re welcome to it if you’re that hungry.”

 
          
“Keep
your money. You’ll need it for a down payment on a tombstone.”

 
          
He
was a poor imitation of a storm trooper. But so were most of the originals. I’d
read enough criminology to know that the cat burglars, the night walkers, were
the really dangerous ones. They killed for unknown reasons at unexpected times.
The reality they stole was ultimately death.

 
          
Gaines
came over the back of the seat in a swift feline movement. He squatted on his
knees beside me, thrusting the gun at my side. “Get going, straight ahead.”

 
          
“What
did you do to my wife?”

 
          
“Nothing.
Get going, I said.”

 
          
“Where
is she?”

 
          
“Out
on the town, for all I know. I never saw your frigging wife.”

 
          
“If
she’s harmed in any way, you won’t last long. Do you understand that, Gaines?
I’ll attend to you personally.”

 
          
I
was stealing his lines and it made him nervous. He stammered slightly when he
said: “S-shut up. G-get going now or I’ll b-blast you.”

 
          
He
urged the gun into my side, handling it with more bravado than caution. Perhaps
I had a fifty-fifty chance of taking him now. I wanted a better chance,
something like ninety to ten. I had more to lose than he had. I hoped. I
desperately hoped. And I got going.

 
          
The
road ran northward out of town, straight as a yardstick through dark fields. I
pushed the speedometer needle around past seventy, nearly to eighty. Whatever
was going to happen, I wanted it over.

 
          
“Don’t
drive so fast,” he said.

 
          
“Does
it make you nervous? I thought you liked going fast.”

 
          
“S-sure.
I used to d-drag-race, here on this very road.
B-but right now I want you to slow down to sixty. I don’t want the HP on my
tail.”

 
          
“Maybe
you’d like to do the driving.”

 
          
“Oh,
certainly, and let you hold the g-gun.”

 
          
“Is
it such fun holding the gun?”

 
          
“Shut
up!” he cried in a sudden yapping rage. “Shut up and slow down like I said.”

 
          
He
pressed the muzzle of the revolver into the soft place below my ribs. I slowed
down to sixty. There were lights ahead, an island of bleak color on the
darkness, where the road joined the east-west highway.

 
          
“You’re
g-going to make a left turn here. I don’t want any funny stuff.”

 
          
I
slowed still more as we approached the intersection, and stopped for the red light.
Two cars were being gassed at a bright, bare all-night station. In the adjacent
lunchroom, people sat at the counter with their backs to me.

 
          
“You
heard me, d-didn’t you? No funny stuff. Let me know you heard me.” He thrust
the gun into me with all his force. He was no longer interested in
self-protection. The light had turned green. He was interested in imposing his
will on me. “Let me know you heard me.”

 
          
I
remained silent.

 
          
“Let
me know you heard me,” he said urgently.

 
          
I
sat with my teeth clenched, my hands turning white on the wheel. The moment
stretched out like rotten elastic. A pair of headlights plunged up out of the
fields of night behind us. The traffic light turned red again.

 
          
One
of the cars left the gas station and rolled out onto the highway. It passed in
front of us going east, gathering speed. I felt invisible. The hot valley wind
blew through my bones like the breath of nothingness.

 
          
“What
are you trying to do?” Gaines said. “Are you trying to make me k-kill you?”

 
          
I
was trying to gather the animal courage to open the door of my car and get out
and walk over to the gas station. The thought of what I had to lose held me
paralyzed. The plunging headlights on the road behind were nearer and brighter.
In a few more seconds they’d be on me like a spotlight, making a zone of safety
that I could walk through.

 
          
They
filled the car with sudden shadows. Though the traffic signal was still against
us, they swerved to pass. I heard the squeal of tires and caught a glimpse of a
pale adolescent face at the wheel. A girl clung like a huge blonde limpet to
the driver’s body.

 
          
He
made a grandstand turn in front of me, double-clutched his hot rod, and fled
eastward down the highway trailing noise. No use to me, no use to anybody.

 
          
I
made a left turn on the green.

 
          
A
late moon had risen over the mountains, blurred large by thin clouds. The
highway climbed through foothills toward it, then rose in sweeping arcs into
the pass. I could feel the pressure in my ears.

 
          
We
passed the sign that marked the summit. I caught a glimpse of the curved
aluminum sea far ahead and below. A long beam flashed out from its edge,
possibly from the lighthouse on Ferguson’s cliff.

 
          
“Are
we going back to
Buenavista
?”

 
          
“You’d
like that, wouldn’t you? But you’re not going back there, now or any time. You
can k-kiss the place good-by.”

 
          
“To hell with you and your cheap threats.”

 
          
“You
think I’m cheap, eh? You called me a two-bit g-gunman. Think again. My
g-grandfather had a summer place up here, a real showplace. In addition to the
spread he had in the valley. I’m not the b-bum you think.”

 
          
“How
does your grandfather prevent you from being a bum?”

 
          
“I
have background, see? You’re stupid for a lawyer. My g-grandfather was loaded.
He had two houses, b-big ones.”

 
          
“Why
tell me?”
A plague on both his houses.

 
          
“I
wouldn’t want you to d-die in ignorance. You better slow down. We’ll be coming
to the turnoff in a minute.”

 
          
It
was marked by a boulder which jutted out of the cut-bank. Some crank or prophet
had scrawled on the boulder in whitewash: “We die daily.”

 
          
I
turned into a gravel road worn bare by the rains of many winters. The bank
above it was
crenelated
by erosion. Below in the
canyon, moonlight drenched the treetops. An owl hooted softly and mournfully.

 
          
I
was keenly aware of these things, their strangeness and their beauty. I thought
of turning hard left over the edge, holding on and taking my chances, letting
the deep trees catch me if they could. I must have given away the thought
somehow. Gaines said: “Don’t do it. You’re a d-dead man if you try it. Just
keep on driving until we reach the g-gate.”

 
          
I
did as I was told. My patience was wearing thin, though, and my time was
running out. I wished that I could read Gaines’s mind as he had just read mine.
Apparently he had cast me for a role in his fantasy. He wanted to hurt me, and
he wanted to impress me. Both halves of the double role were dangerous.

 
          
Coming
out of a long climbing curve, the headlights flashed on gateposts of squared
stone. The gates themselves had rusted off their hinges and leaned crazily.