Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (5 page)

 
          
THERE
WAS A POLICE SEAL on the front door of Broadman’s store. I peered through the
dusty pane. The evening light fell slanting across the furniture and
bric
-à-
brac
which Broadman had
laid up against hard times, before time stopped for him.

 
          
I
became aware of voices next door, a woman’s voice raised high, and a man’s
growling under it. I strolled over and looked in through the window of the
tamale shop. The man in the white hat was arguing across the counter with a
black-haired woman. Her hands gripped the edge of the counter as if it was a
high ledge from which she would fall to her death if she let go.

 
          
“But
they will kill him,” she cried.

 
          
“Let
them. He asked for it.”

 
          
“What
will I do if they kill him?”

 
          
“You’ll
be better off.”

 
          
His
eyes were brown liquid slits under his white hat. They widened when they saw me
through the glass door. I tried it. It was locked.

 
          
He
shook his head curtly, and waved me away. The movement of his arm was jerky,
like a semaphore’s. I pointed at a sign in the window which said: OPEN 7 A.M.
TO MIDNIGHT. He came around the counter, opened the door about a foot, and
thrust his nose out. His nose was longer and sharper than it had appeared in
the afternoon.

 
          
“I’m
closed, I’m sorry. There’s a good place around the corner on Main Street.” Then
he gave me a second look. “Are you a policeman? I saw you with Mr. Granada this
afternoon.”

 
          
“I’m
a lawyer, William Gunnarson. Could I talk to you a little, Mr. Donato?”

 
          
“I
have already talked about my brother, to the police.”

 
          
The
woman had crowded up behind him. She was a young pretty woman, but her face was
puffed and dissolute with trouble. She said with one hand in her tangled
licorice hair:

 
          
“Tell
him nothing!”

 
          
“Be
quiet, Secundina. You are a fool.” He turned back to me, trying to control his
feelings. Their pressure forced the flesh of his face into stark shapes, like
cracked clay. “I see
,
you have heard that my brother
is wanted by the police. You want to offer your services?”

 
          
“That
wasn’t my idea. I want to talk about your neighbor Broadman.
Your
ex-neighbor.”

 
          
Donato
didn’t seem to hear me. “I have no need for a lawyer. I have no money to pay a
lawyer.” I guessed he was using me to continue his argument with the woman. “If
I had money I would go and buy a nice new rope and hang myself.”

 
          
“Liar,”
she said. “You have a savings account. And he is your only brother.”

 
          
“I
am his only brother, too. What has he done for me?”

 
          
“He
worked for you.”

 
          
“He
broke dishes. He mopped the floor and left it dirty. But I paid him, I kept you
eating.”

 
          
“Big shot!”
Her mouth curled.

 
          
“Gus
is the big shot. He throws his weight, and I pick up the pieces. This time
there’s one big piece, a dead man. I can’t pick it up.”

 
          
“But
he is innocent.”

 
          
“Like
the Devil himself, innocent.”

 
          
Her
teeth flashed. “Dirty liar, you must not say that.”

 
          
“And
Gus is the one who tells the truth? I tell you, I am finished with Gus. He’s
not my brother. He can live or
die,
I don’t want to
know about it.” He turned to me. “Go away, Mister, eh?”

 
          
“Where
is your brother?”

 
          
“Out in the
tules
someplace.
How
do I know? If I knew, I’d go out and bring him in. He took my pickup.”

 
          
“He
borrowed it,” Mrs. Donato said. “He wants to bring it back. He wants to talk to
you.”

 
          
“Have
you seen him, Mrs. Donato?”

 
          
Her
face closed up. “I didn’t say that.”

 
          
“I
must have misunderstood you. Can we go someplace and talk? I have some
questions I’d very much like to ask you.”

 
          
“What about?”

 
          
“People
you may have heard of. There’s a man named Larry Gaines, for instance, who
works as a lifeguard at the Foothill Club.”

 
          
Her
eyes became hard and dim and dusty, like the glass eyes you see in deer heads.
“I
never been
there in my life. I don’t know
nobody
out there.”

 
          
“You
know Tony Padilla,” her brother-in-law said. He looked at her significantly.

 
          
“Who’s
he, Mr. Donato?”

 
          
“Fellow
tends bar at the Foothill Club.”

 
          
“What’s
he got to do with this?”

 
          
“Nothing,”
he said impassively. “We don’t, neither. Excuse us now, Mister, how about it?
You see what family trouble I got. This is a bad time to visit.”

 
          
Gently
and firmly, he shut the door in my face.

 
          
I
took a taxi to the Foothill Club and told the driver not to wait. There was a
police Mercury with undercover plates among the
Cadillacs
and sports cars in the tree-shaded parking lot. I was in no mood to talk to
policemen. I leaned against the trunk of one of the trees, as far as possible
from the Mercury, and waited for Wills’s detectives to come out.

 
          
The
mere idea of detectives at the Foothill Club was incongruous. It was one of
those monumentally unpretentious places where you could still imagine that the
sun had never set on the international set. It cost five thousand dollars to
join, and membership was limited to three hundred. Even if you had the five
thousand, you had to wait for one of the members to die. And then take a blood
test, for blueness.

 
          
The
members straggling out in twos and threes from the nineteenth hole all looked
as if they intended to live forever. Men with hand-polished leather faces who
followed the sun from Acapulco to Juan-les-Pins, elderly striding women in
sensible shoes complaining in anglicized accents about the price of drinks or
the fact that the club was cutting costs on the heating system of the swimming
pool.

 
          
One
of them wondered audibly what had happened to that nice young pool attendant. A
silver-haired man in a white scarf said, with some satisfaction, that the
fellow had been fired. He’d made one pass too many at you-know-who, but in his
opinion, which his voice caressed, the woman was just as much to blame as the
lifeguard, what was his name?
Too many new faces, slipping
standards.

 
          
The
trees that lined the parking lot were silver-dollar eucalyptus, appropriately
enough. Their metallic leaves gleamed in the dying sunset. Twilight gathered in
the folds of the foothills and rolled like blue fog down the valley, catching
in the branches of scattered oaks. The slopes of the golf course dissolved away
into darkness. Venus lit her candle in the western part of the sky. I thought
of Sally and her leg of lamb. Some kind of cooked-meat smell was emanating from
the clubhouse.
Prime ribs of unicorn, perhaps, or breast of
phoenix under glass.

 
          
The
clubhouse was a rambling building with about an acre of red tile roof and many
wings and entrances. Like the hills and trees around it, it had the air of
having been there for a long time. I was beginning to feel indigenous myself.
Not a member:
nothing
like that: a wild thing who
lived in the neighborhood.

 
          
A
car came up the road from town. Its headlights wavered like antennae before it
entered the parking lot. It stopped just inside the stone gateposts.

 
          
A
man got out and strode toward me busily. “Park it, bud.”

 
          
He
was very short and wide, broad-faced, and pigeon-breasted, as if a pile driver
had fallen on him in his formative years. He wore a light suit, a sunburst tie,
and a light hat with a band that matched the tie. He had a voice like a foghorn
and a breath, when he came up close, like the back room of a bar.
“You deaf or something?”

 
          
I
was feeling declassed and surly, but I answered mildly enough: “I’m not a
parking attendant. Park it yourself.”

 
          
He
didn’t move. “You must be the manager, eh?” Without waiting for an answer, he
went on: “Nice place you got here. I’d like to pick up a club like this
myself—high class, wealthy clientele, quiet surroundings. I could turn a place
like this into a gold mine. How much do you make a week?”

 
          
“I
have nothing to do with the management of the club.”

 
          
“I
see.” For some obscure reason, he decided that I was a member and was snubbing
him. He jerked a thumb at his car. “Don’t judge me by that Ford, it’s just a
rental. Back home I keep a four-car garage, nothing in it but Caddies. I don’t
wanna
brag, but I could buy this place outright, cash on
the line.”

 
          
“Bully
for you,” I said. “Are you in the real-estate business?”

 
          
“I
guess you could say I am, at that.
Salaman’s
the
name.”

 
          
He
offered me his hand. I didn’t take it. It hung in the air like a dead haddock.
His eyes became bright and moist under his hat brim.

 
          
“So
you won’t take the hand of friendship.” His voice was a blend of menace and
sentimentality, like asphalt mixed with molasses. “Okay, no hard feelings. I
never been in the State of Cal before, but it certainly isn’t the friendly
place they said it was. It’s strictly from
chillyville
,
if you want my opinion.”

 
          
He
took off his hat and looked ready to weep into it. His hair was a frizzy black
mass which sprang up vivaciously, adding inches to his height and altering his
appearance. In spite of his illicit air, the man was queerly pathetic.

 
          
“Where
do you come from, Mr.
Salaman
?”

 
          
He
said as if he’d been waiting to be asked: “Miami, Florida. I’m in business
there, various kinds of business. I flew out here for combined business and
pleasure, you might say.
Deductible expense.
You got a
member with you, name of Holly May?”

 
          
“Holly
May?”

 
          
“You
may know her as Mrs. Ferguson. I understand she married a man name of Ferguson
since her and me were—friends.” He smacked his lips over the word or its
connotations. “Just between us girls, big blondes were always my weakness.”

 
          
“I
see.”

 
          
My
noncommittal act was wearing thin. So was my patience.

 
          
“Do
you know her?”
Salaman
said.