Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (28 page)

 
          
“Turn
in here. This is it, James.
The ancestral acres.”
There was a weird, sardonic sorrow in his voice.

 
          
The
driveway was half overgrown with weeds which brushed against the underside of
the car. On either side, eucalyptus trees hung in the moony air like shapes of
mist congealing into cloud. The house loomed dark at the end of the avenue.

 
          
It
was a two-storied house with walls of stone and a round stone tower at each
end. It had been built to resist time, but time and weather were winning out
against it. Mountain winds had torn off shingles and left ragged holes in the
roof. The windows on the upper floor were smashed; the windows on the lower
floor were boarded up. There was a light behind one of the boarded front
windows.

 
          
“My
mother used to live here in the summers when she was a girl.” As if it were the
conclusion of the same line of thought, Gaines added: “G-get out now, I’ll be
right behind you. One false move and I fire, see?”

 
          
His
voice was small in the silence. Drifts of leaves and fallen branches and
twisted strips of bark littered the ground. They crackled under our feet. The
moon peered down through flimsy cloud like an
acned
blonde roused behind her curtains by our noise. Our shadows fell jerkily across
the veranda and lengthened up the door into the darkness under the veranda
roof.

 
          
Gaines
thrust his leg out past me and kicked the ancestral door. A woman’s voice
answered, its brassiness hushed by alarm. “Who is it?”

 
          
“Larry.
Open up. I brought a friend with me.”

 
          
A
bolt squealed. The door opened an inch, and then a foot. The woman who called
herself Holly May looked out.

 
          
“What
friend? You got no friends.”

 
          
She
slouched in the doorway, narrow-eyed. A dead cigarette hung down from the
corner of her mouth. Her body gave off a sense of sleeping danger, immediate as
an odor.

 
          
“It
isn’t exactly a friend,” Gaines said. “It’s the lawyer Ferguson hired.”

 
          
“Why
did you have to cart him up here?”

 
          
“I p-picked him up in Mountain Grove.
I couldn’t let him run
loose.”

 
          
“Well,
don’t just stand there, bring him in.”

 
          
Gaines
ushered me in with the gun. The woman bolted the door behind us. We went down a
vast dark hallway into a vaster room.

 
          
One
end of the room was lit by a gasoline lantern which stood in the nearest
corner. Its hissing circle of brightness fell with shuddering violence on the
very light housekeeping arrangements which Gaines and the woman had set up: a
canvas sleeping bag on the bare floor, a rustic bench blanched by rain and sun,
a few glowing coals in the great stone fireplace, bread and cheese and an open
can of beans laid out on a page of newspaper which carried the picture of
Donato, under his sheet.

 
          
I
wondered when they planned to start spending Ferguson’s money. Or had they involved
themselves in crime merely to reduce themselves to this?
To
make a brief impossible marriage in a corner of the wrecked past.

 
          
“Stand
b-back against the wall alongside the fireplace,” Gaines said to me.
“On the far side away from the lantern.
And stand still, you
hear me?”

 
          
I
stood against the wall in silence.

 
          
“You
hear me?” Gaines said. “Let me know you hear me.”

 
          
I
could see him clearly for the first time. He was a good-looking man, if you
didn’t look too closely. But his eyes were small and brilliant with trouble.
They moved like ball bearings magnetized by the woman. Her presence seemed to
focus his personality, and also to diminish it.

 
          
He
stood with one hand on his hip, the other holding the gun. He might have been
posing for a photograph: rebel without a cause years later and still without a
cause; or actor in search of a role, looking for the crime that would complete
his nothingness. I guessed that his life was a series of such stills, forced
into the semblance of action by fits and starts of rage.

 
          
“Let
me know you hear me, G-
gunnarson
.”

 
          
I
stood silent. He glanced down anxiously at his gun, as if it might suggest an
action to him, turn in his hand like a handle and open the door on manhood. The
gun jerked. A bullet tore the floor in front of me and sprinkled my legs with
slivers.

 
          
Among
the dying echoes of the shot, the woman said: “Don’t get gun-happy, Larry.
We’re not the only people in these hills.”

 
          
“You
can’t hear it outside, the walls are too thick. I used to come up here when I
was a kid and shoot at targets.”

 
          
“Human targets?”
I said. “Was that your boyhood hobby?”

 
          
The
woman tittered like a broken xylophone. Unkempt as she was, her bleached hair
stringy as hemp, her hips bulging in a pair of men’s jeans, she dragged at the
attention. Her eyes were blowtorch blue in a white, frozen face.

 
          
“Have
yourself a good look, lawyer. It’s going to have to last you a long time.”

 
          
“Are
you going someplace, Hilda?”

 
          
“Hey,”
she said to Gaines, “he knows my real name. Did you have to tell him my real
name, stupid?”

 
          
“D-don’t
you call me stupid. I can think rings around you any day of the week.”

 
          
She
moved toward him. “If you have such a brilliant brain, what did you bring him
here for? He knows me. He knows my name. It’s a hell of a note.”

 
          
“Your
mother and D-
dotery
told him. I don’t know how he got
to them, but I caught him outside their store in the G-grove.”

 
          
“What
in merry hell are we going to do with him now? We’re supposed to be hitting the
road tonight.”

 
          
“We’ll
knock him off. What else can we do?” His voice was shallow, almost devoid of
expression. He glanced down at the gun and said more forcefully: “Knock him off
and burn the frigging place down. We can d-dress him in some of my clothes,
see, we’re about the same size. Once he’s cremated, nobody will know the
d-difference. Even the Rover boys won’t know the d-difference.”

 
          
“You’re
going to cut them out, then?”

 
          
“I
always did intend to cut them out. It isn’t a big enough melon to slice so many
ways. It’s why I wanted Broadman out, why I tipped off the cops on D-
donato
.” He strutted at the edge of the light. “I’m not so
stupid, bag. Anyway, what contribution did the Rover boys make? I’m the
brains,
they’re nothing better than errand boys.”

 
          
“They
did your dirty work for you.”

 
          
“That’s
what I mean, I’m the brains. They’d crucify their g-grandmothers for a stick of
H. Let the k-kill-crazy bastards stay here and take the rap. I’ll send them a
postcard from South America.”

 
          
Her
blue gaze jumped like a gas flame at his face. “You mean we will, don’t you?”

 
          
“We
will what?”

 
          
“Send
them a postcard from South America, stupid. We’re going there together, aren’t
we?”

 
          
“Not if you g-go on calling me stupid.”

 
          
“What
in hell is this, Larry?”

 
          
“You
keep a civil tongue, talking to me.”

 
          
“Oh, sure.
The mastermind.
The big brain.”
She snarled at him: “Let me see those
tickets.”

 
          
“They’re
not here. I don’t have them.”

 
          
“You
went down to the Grove to pick them up. Didn’t Adelaide buy them?”

 
          
“Of
course she did. They’re in my car. Everything’s in my car.”

 
          
“How
do I know there are two tickets?”

 
          
“I’m
telling you. Do you think I’d stand you up at this late date?”

 
          
“If
you thought you could get away with it. Only you can’t.”

 
          
It
resembled a conversation on a lower floor of merry hell, where two dead souls
re-enacted a meaningless scene forever. It was the meaninglessness that made it
hell. I dug deep for the most meaningful words I could find. “Listen to me.
Hilda. Ferguson’s very fond of
you,
he’s ready to
forgive you. Why throw yourself away on thieves and psychos? You still have
some kind of future if you’ll take it.”

 
          
Gaines
moved on me jerkily. His boot soles thumped the floor as if he had poor contact
with reality.

 
          
“I’m
no psycho, d-dad.” He offered the gun in evidence, leveling it at my middle.
“Take it back or I k-kill you now. I’m going to k-kill you anyway. I’d just as
soon k-kill you now.”

 
          
Hilda
stepped between us. “Let the man speak his piece.”

 
          
“What
the hell for?”

 
          
“He’s
funny. He gives me kicks.” She was looking at me like a lost soul out of hell.

 
          
“You’ve
had your k-kicks.” He smiled at her malignly.

 
          
“What’s
on your mind? Are you taking Adelaide with you instead of me? I wouldn’t put it
past you, mother lover.”

 
          
One
of his sudden rages went through him like a hemorrhage. It drained his face of
color. “D-don’t call me that. You want to d-die, too?”

 
          
“Christ,
you’re the one that’s kill-crazy. You better give me that gun.”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t trust you with it.”

 
          
“Hand
it over, little man,” she growled. Her breasts were thrust out under her shirt,
aggressive as nose cones.

 
          
“D-don’t
give me orders.”

 
          
The
gun wavered toward her. She reached for the muzzle. Gaines looked horribly
torn, ready to faint. He raised the gun and struck her with it on the side of
the head. She went to her knees like a supplicant.

 
          
I
stepped around her and hit him in the soft place below his ribs. He opened his
mouth to grunt. I smashed it with my right fist. He ran rapidly backward across
the room and slammed into the wall on the far side. The gun clacked on the
floor and skittered away into shadow.

 
          
I
went after Gaines. He didn’t come to meet me. He stayed against the wall,
gasping for breath, until I was almost on top of him. Then he moved very
quickly. His fist came out from under his windbreaker with a blade projecting
upward from it.

 
          
I
rushed him and got both hands on the arm behind the fist. We were face to face
for an instant, static and straining. Before the instant was over, I knew that
I was stronger than he was. The knowledge made me grin.