Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (7 page)

 
          
“Are
you serious, Bidwell?”

 
          
He
leaned forward into the light. His eyes were intensely serious. “The man’s a
maniac. He’s been drinking ever since she took off, and he’s taken it into his
head to blame me for the elopement.”

 
          
“When
did she leave?”

 
          
“Last night, from here.
She and her husband were having
dinner in the dining room. There was a telephone call for her. She took it, and
then walked right out of the club. Gaines was waiting in the parking lot.”

 
          
“How
do you know?”

 
          
“One
of the members saw him there, and mentioned it to me later.”

 
          
“Did
you tell the police about this?”

 
          
“I
should certainly say I didn’t. This is a delicate situation, Mr. Gunnarson.
An insane situation, but a delicate one.”
He managed a small
pale smile. “Ours is the most respected club west of the Mississippi—”

 
          
“It
won’t be if one of the members shoots the manager for conspiring with a
lifeguard against Holly May’s chastity.”

 
          
“Please
don’t spell it out.” He closed his eyes, and shuddered. “At least, if he did
shoot me, it would be the end of my worries.”

 
          
“You
almost mean that, don’t you?”

 
          
He
opened his eyes, wide. “I almost do.”

 
          
“Does
Ferguson have a gun?”

 
          
“He
has an entire arsenal.
Really.
He’s a big-game hunter,
among other things. He actually enjoys killing.”

 
          
“Maybe
you better go home.”

 
          
“He
knows where I live. He was there early this morning, shouting at the front
door.”

 
          
“I
think you should have him picked up. He may be dangerous.”

 
          
“He
is. He is dangerous. But I cannot and will not bring the police into this.
There is simply too much at stake.”

 
          
“What, exactly?”

 
          
“The reputation of the club.
There hasn’t been a major
scandal here since the Abernathy suicide pact, and that was before my tenure.
All I can do now is hold on and hope that something will happen to save us at
the eleventh hour.”

 
          
“Let’s
hope so, Mr. Bidwell.”

 
          
“Call
me Arthur, if you like. Here, let me pour you a drink.”

 
          
“No, thanks.”

 
          
He
was trying to prolong the conversation. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t the
eleventh hour, but it was nearly the ninth. The Ella Barker case had led me far
afield, and threatened to lead me further. It was time to go home to Sally. The
thought of her was like
a stretching
elastic which
never quite snapped.

 
          
But
sometimes it went on stretching.

 
          
The
phone on Bidwell’s desk rang. He lifted the receiver with an effort, as if it
were a heavy iron dumbbell. He listened to a scratchy voice, and said: “For
God’s sake, Padilla, I told you to head him off.… No! Don’t call them,
that’s
an order.”

 
          
Bidwell
sprang to the door, slammed it shut, and locked it. He leaned against it with
his arms spread out, like someone getting ready to be crucified. “Padilla says
he’s coming here now.”

 
          
“Then
you better get away from the door. Who’s Padilla?”

 
          
“The bartender.
Ferguson told him he’s waited long enough.”
Droplets were forming on his face as they do on a cold glass. “Talk to him,
won’t you? Explain that I’m utterly blameless.
Utterly.
I had nothing to do with his blessed wife’s departure.” He stepped sideways,
tanglefooted
, and leaned in the corner.

 
          
“Why
does he think you had?”

 
          
“Because he’s insane.
He makes mountains out of molehills. I
merely called her into my office to take a telephone call.”

 
          
“From Gaines?”

 
          
“If so, he must have disguised his voice.
I thought myself
it was a woman’s voice—not one I recognized. But Ferguson seems to think I’m in
cahoots with Gaines, simply because I called his wife out of the dining room.”

 
          
“I
hear you, Bidwell,” a voice said through the door.

 
          
Bidwell
jumped as if he’d felt an electric shock, then slumped against the wall as if
the shock had killed him.

 
          
“If
I didn’t hear you, Bidwell, I could smell you. I could tell that you were in
there by the smell.” The doorknob rattled.
The voice outside
rose an octave.
“Let me in, you lily-livered swine. I want to talk to
you, you Bidwell swine. And you know what about, Bidwell.”

 
          
Bidwell
shuddered each time he heard his name. He looked at me pleadingly. “Talk to
him, will you? It only makes him angrier when I try to talk to him. You’re a
lawyer,
you know how to talk to people.”

 
          
“What
you need is a bodyguard.”

 
          
Ferguson
punctuated this remark with a heavy thud on the bottom of the door. “Open up,
Bidwell, or I’ll kick the bloody well door down.”

 
          
He
kicked it again. One of the panels cracked, and sprinkled varnish on the rug.

 
          
Bidwell
said urgently: “Go out and talk to him. You have nothing to fear. He doesn’t
hate you. I’m the one he hates.”

 
          
Under
Ferguson’s third kick, the cracked panel started to give. Standing to one side
of it, I unlocked and opened the door.

 
          
Ferguson
kicked air and lurched in past me. He was a big man in his fifties, shaggy in
Harris tweeds. His face was long and equine. Small eyes were closely and deeply
set under his overhanging gray eyebrows. They scowled around the room. “Where
is he? Where is the pandering little swine?”

 
          
Bidwell
was behind the door. He stayed there.

 
          
“That’s
pretty rough language, isn’t it?” I said.

 
          
Ferguson
swung his head to look at me. The movement tipped him off balance. He fell back
against the side of the doorway. Something metallic in his jacket pocket rapped
the door frame.

 
          
“You
better give me your gun, Colonel. It might go off and shoot you in the hip.
Those hip wounds can be painful.”

 
          
“I
know how to handle firearms.”

 
          
“Still,
I think you better give me your gun, just for the present. You wouldn’t want to
hurt anybody—”

 
          
“Wouldn’t I, though!
I’m going to hurt Bidwell. I’m going to
put a hole in that hide of his. And then I’m going to skin him and nail his
coyote hide on his own front door to tan.”

 
          
He
sounded like a blustering drunk, but blustering drunks could be dangerous. “No,
you’re not. I happen to be an attorney, and I’m arresting you. Now hand over
your gun.”

 
          
“To hell with you.
You look to me like another one of
Bidwell’s wife-stealing pretty boys.”

 
          
He
lunged toward me, lost his balance again, and hung onto the edge of the door.
It closed enough to reveal Bidwell pasted to the wall behind it. Ferguson
emitted a skirling cry, like bagpipes, and reached for his pocket.

 
          
I
inserted my left hand between his prominent
adam’s
-apple and the collar of his shirt, jerked him
toward me, and hit him with my right hand on the jut of the jaw. I had always
wanted to hit a Colonel.

 
          
This
one drew himself erect, marched stiffly to Bidwell’s desk, made a teetering
half-turn on his heels, and sat down ponderously in Bidwell’s chair. He opened
his mouth to speak, like an executive about to lay down company policy, then
smiled at the foolishness of it all, and passed out. The swivel chair spilled
him backward onto the floor.

 
          
“Now
look what you’ve done,” Bidwell said. “He’ll sue us.”

 
          
“We’ll
sue him first.”

 
          
“Impossible.
You can’t bring suit against twenty million dollars. He’s capable of hiring the
best lawyers in the country.”

 
          
“You’re
talking to one of them.” I was feeling slightly elated, after hitting a
Colonel. “That’s the kind of suit I’ve always dreamed of bringing.”

 
          
“But
he didn’t do anything to me,” Bidwell said.

 
          
“You
sound disappointed.”

 
          
Bidwell
looked at me glumly. “No doubt I should thank you for saving my life. But, frankly,
I don’t feel thankful.”

 
          
I
squatted by the recumbent man and got the gun out of his pocket. It was a cute
little snub-nosed medium-caliber automatic, heavy with clip. I held it up for
Bidwell to see.

 
          
He
refused to look at it. “Put it away. Please.”

 
          
“So
you got his gun,” somebody said from the doorway. “I talked him into handing
over one gun, couple hours ago. But I guess he had another one in the car.”

 
          
“Go
away, Padilla,” Bidwell said. “Don’t come in here.”

 
          
“
Yessir
.”

 
          
Padilla
smiled and came in. He was a curly-headed young man with a twisted ear, wearing
a white bartender’s jacket. He looked over Ferguson with a professional eye.

 
          
“There’s
a cut on his chin. You have to hit him?”

 
          
“It
seemed like a good idea at the time. Mr. Bidwell would rather have been shot.
But this is a nice rug. I didn’t want them to get blood all over it.”

 
          
“It
isn’t funny,” Bidwell said. “What are we going to do with him?”

 
          
“Let
him sleep it off,” Padilla answered cheerfully.

 
          
“Not
here. Not in my office.”

 
          
“
Naw
, we’ll take him home. You tell Frankie to take over the
bar,
we’ll take him home, put him to bed. He won’t
even remember in the morning. He’ll think he cut himself shaving.”

 
          
“How
do you know he won’t remember?”

 
          
“Because
I been
making his drinks. He killed a fifth of
Seagram’s since six o’clock. I kept pouring it into him, hoping that he’d pass
out any minute. But he’s got a stomach like a charred oak barrel bound with
brass.”

 
          
He
stooped and touched Ferguson’s stomach with his finger. Ferguson smiled in his
sleep.