Authors: Ross Macdonald
“Conchita?”
“I’m Mrs. Florence Williams. Conchita’s been dead for thirty years. Williams and I kept on with her name when we
bought the cabins.” She looked around her as if she hadn’t really seen the place for a long time. “You wouldn’t think it, but these cabins were a real moneymaker during the war.”
“There’s a lot more competition now.”
“You’re telling me.” She joined me in the shadow of the tree. “What can I do for you? If you’re selling don’t even bother to open your mouth. I just lost my second-to-last roomer.” She made a farewell gesture toward the open door of the cabin.
“Randy Shepherd?”
She stepped away from me and looked me up and down. “You’re after him, eh? I figured somebody was, the way he took off and left his things. The only trouble is, they’re not worth much. They’re not worth ten per cent of the money he owes me.”
She was looking at me appraisingly, and I returned the look. “How much would that be, Mrs. Williams?”
“It adds up to hundreds of dollars, over the years. After my husband died, he talked me into investing money in his big treasure hunt. That was back around 1950, when he got out of the clink.”
“Treasure hunt?”
“For buried money,” she said. “Randy rented heavy equipment and dug up most of my place and half the county besides. This place has never been the same since, and neither have I. It was like a hurricane went through.”
“I’d like to buy a piece of that treasure hunt.”
She countered rapidly: “You can have my share for a hundred dollars, even.”
“With Randy Shepherd thrown in?”
“I don’t know about
that.”
The talk of money had brightened her dusty eyes. “This wouldn’t be blood money that we’re talking about?”
“I’m not planning to kill him.”
“Then what’s he so a-scared of? I never saw him scared like this before. How do I know you won’t kill him?”
I told her who I was and showed her my photostat. “Where has he gone, Mrs. Williams?”
“Let’s see the hundred dollars.”
I got two fifties out of my wallet and gave her one of them. “I’ll give you the other after I talk to Shepherd. Where can I find him?”
She pointed south along the road. “He’s on his way to the border. He’s on foot, and you can’t miss him. He only left here about twenty minutes ago.”
“What happened to his car?”
“He sold it to a parts dealer up the hike. That’s what makes me think he’s crossing over to Mexico. I know he’s done it before, he’s got friends to hide him.”
I started for my car. She followed me, moving with surprising speed.
“Don’t tell him I told you, will you? He’ll come back some dark night and take it out of my hide.”
“I won’t tell him, Mrs. Williams.”
With my road map on the seat beside me, I drove due south through farmland. I passed a field where Holstein cattle were grazing. Then the tomato fields began, spreading in every direction. The tomatoes had been harvested, but I could see a few hanging red and wrinkled on the withering vines.
When I had traveled about a mile and a half, the road took a jog and ran through low chaparral. I caught sight of Shepherd. He was tramping along quickly, almost loping, with a bedroll bouncing across his shoulders and a Mexican hat on his head. Not far ahead of him Tijuana sloped against the sky like a gorgeous junk heap.
Shepherd turned and saw my car. He began to run. He plunged off the road into the brush and reappeared in the dry
channel of a river. He had lost his floppy Mexican hat but still had his bedroll.
I left my car and went after him. A rattlesnake buzzed at me from under an ocotillo, and focused my attention. When I looked for Shepherd again, he had disappeared.
Making as little noise as possible, and keeping my head down, I moved through the chaparral to the road which ran parallel with the border fence. The road map called it Monument Road. If Shepherd planned to cross the border, he would have to cross Monument Road first. I settled down in the ditch beside it, keeping an alternating watch in both directions.
I waited for nearly an hour. The birds in the brush got used to me, and the insects became familiar. The sun moved very slowly down the sky. I kept looking one way and then the other, like a spectator at a languid tennis match.
When Shepherd made his move, it was far from languid. He came out of the brush about two hundred yards west of me, scuttled across the road with his bedroll bouncing, and headed up the slope toward the high wire fence that marked the border.
The ground between the road and the fence had been cleared. I cut across it and caught Shepherd before he went over. He turned with his back to the fence and said between hard breaths:
“You stay away from me. I’ll cut your gizzard.”
A knife blade stuck out of his fist. On the hillside beyond the fence a group of small boys and girls appeared as if they had sprouted from the earth.
“Drop the knife,” I said a little wearily. “We’re attracting a lot of attention.”
I pointed up the hill toward the children. Some of them pointed back at me. Some waved. Shepherd was tempted to look, and turned his head a little to one side.
I moved hard on his knife arm and put an armlock on it which forced him to drop the knife. I picked it up and closed it and tossed it over the fence into Mexico. One of the little boys came scrambling down the hill for it.
Further up the hill, where the houses began, an invisible musician began to play bullfight music on a trumpet. I felt as if Mexico was laughing at me. It wasn’t a bad feeling.
Shepherd was almost crying. “I’m not going back to a bum murder rap. You put me behind the walls again, it’ll kill me.”
“I don’t think you killed Jean Trask.”
He gave me an astonished look, which quickly faded. “You’re just saying that.”
“No. Let’s get out of here, Randy. You don’t want the border patrol to pick you up. We’ll go some place where we can talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“I’m ready to make a deal with you.”
“Not me. I allus get the short end of the deals.”
He had the cynicism of a small-time thief. I was getting impatient with him.
“Move, con.”
I took him by the arm and walked him down the slope toward the road. A child’s voice nearly as high as a whistle called to us from Mexico above the sound of the trumpet:
“Adios.”
Shepherd and I walked east along Monument Road to its intersection with the road that ran north and south. He hung back when he saw my car. It could take him so fast and so far, all the way back to the penitentiary.
“Get it through your head, Randy, I don’t want you. I want your information.”
“And what do
I
get out of it?”
“What do you want?”
He answered quickly and ardently, like a man who has been defrauded of his rights: “I want a fair shake for once in my life. And enough money to live on. How can a man help breaking the law if he don’t have money to live on?”
It was a good question.
“If I had my rights,” he went on, “I’d be a rich man. I wouldn’t be living on tortillas and chili.”
“Are we talking about Eldon Swain’s money?”
“It ain’t Swain’s money. It belongs to anybody who finds it. The statute of limitations ran out years ago,” he said in the legalese of a cell-block lawyer, “and the money’s up for grabs.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace in this very area.” He made a sweeping gesture
which took in the dry riverbed and the empty fields beyond. “I been making a study of this place for twenty years, I know it like the back of my hand.” He sounded like a prospector who had worn out his wits in the desert looking for gold. “All I need is to get real lucky and find me the coordinates. I’m Eldon Swain’s legal heir.”
“How so?”
“We made a deal. He was interested in a relative of mine.” He probably meant his daughter. “And so we made a deal.”
The thought of it lifted his spirits. He got into my car without argument, hoisting his bedroll into the back seat.
“Where do we go from here?” he said.
“We might as well stay where we are for the present.”
“And then?”
“We go our separate ways.”
He glanced quickly at my face, as if to catch me in a false expression. “You’re conning me.”
“Wait and see. Let’s get one thing out of the way first. Why did you go to Jean Trask’s house today?”
“Take her some tomatoes.”
“Why did you pick the lock?”
“I thought maybe she was sleeping. Sometimes she sleeps real heavy, when she’s been drinking. I didn’t know she was dead, man. I wanted to talk to her.”
“About Sidney Harrow?”
“That was part of it. I knew the cops would be asking her questions about him. The fact is, I was the one introduce her to Sidney, and I wanted Miss Jean not to mention my name to the cops.”
“Because you were a suspect in Swain’s death?”
“That was part of it. I knew they’d be opening up that old case. If my name came up and they traced my connection with Swain, I’d be right back on the hooks. Hell, my connection with Swain went back thirty years.”
“Which is why you didn’t identify his body.”
“That’s right.”
“And you let Jean go on thinking her father was alive, and go on looking for him.”
“It made her feel better,” he said. “She never found out how he died.”
“Who shot him?”
“I don’t know. Honest to God. I only know I didn’t.”
“You mentioned a snatch.”
“That’s right. It’s where him and I parted company. I admit I been a thief in my time, but strong-arm stuff was never for me. When he started to plan this snatch, I backed out on him.” Shepherd added meditatively: “When Swain came back from Mexico in 1954, he wasn’t the man he used to was. I think he went a little crazy down there.”
“Did Swain kidnap Nick Chalmers?”
“That’s the one he was talking about. I never saw the boy myself. I was long gone when it happened. And it never came out in the papers. I guess the parents hushed it up.”
“Why would a man with half a million dollars attempt a kidnapping?”
“Ask me another. Swain kept changing his story. Sometimes he claimed he had the half million, sometimes he said he didn’t. Sometimes he claimed he had it and lost it. He said once he was highjacked by a border guard. His wildest story was the one about Mr. Rawlinson. Mr. Rawlinson was the president of the bank that Eldon Swain worked for, and he claimed Mr. Rawlinson took the money and framed him for it.”
“Could that have happened?”
“I don’t see how. Mr. Rawlinson wouldn’t ruin his own bank. And he’s been on his uppers ever since. I know that for certain because I got a relative works for him.”
“Your ex-wife.”
“You get around,” he said in some surprise. “Did you talk to her?”
“A little.”
He leaned toward me, keenly interested. “What did she say about me?”
“We didn’t discuss you.”
Shepherd seemed disappointed, as if he had been robbed of a dimension. “I see her from time to time. I bear no grudges, even if she did divorce me when I was in the pen. I was kind of glad to make the break,” he said dolefully. “She’s got mixed blood, you probably noticed that. It kind of hurt my pride to be married to her.”
“We were talking about the money,” I reminded him. “You’re pretty certain that Swain took it and kept it.”
“I know he did. He had it with him at Conchita’s place. This was right after he lifted it.”
“You saw it?”
“I know somebody who did.”
“Your daughter?”
“No.” He added with a touch of belligerence: “Leave my daughter out of this. She’s going straight.”
“Where?”
“Mexico. She went to Mexico with him and never came back from there.” His answer sounded a little glib, and I wondered if it was true.
“Why did Swain come back?”
“He always planned to, that’s my theory. He left the money buried on this side of the border, he told me so himself more than once. He offered me a share of it if I would go partners with him and drive him around and grubstake him. Like I said, he wasn’t in very good shape when he came back. Fact is, he needed a keeper.”
“And you were his keeper?”
“That’s right. I owed him something. He was a pretty good man at one time, Eldon Swain was. When I hit the pavement the first time, on parole, he took me on as a gardener at his
place in San Marino. It was a real showplace. I used to grow him roses as big as dahlias. It’s a terrible thing when a man like that ends up dead of lead poisoning in a railroad yard.”
“Did you drive Swain to Pacific Point in 1954?”
“I admit that much. But that was before he started to talk about snatching the boy. I wouldn’t drive him on that caper. I got out of town in a hurry. I wanted no part—”
“You didn’t shoot him before you left, by any chance?”
He gave me a shocked look. “No
sir.
You don’t know much about me, mister. I’m not a man of violence. I specialize in staying out of trouble, out of jail. And I’m still working at it.”
“What were you sent up for?”
“Car theft. Break and enter. But I never carried a gun.”
“Maybe somebody else shot Swain and you burned off his fingerprints.”
“That’s crazy. Why would I do that?”
“So that you wouldn’t be traced through him. Let’s say you took the ransom money from Swain.”
“What ransom money? I never saw any ransom money. I was back here on the border by the time he took the boy.”
“Was Eldon Swain a child molester?”
Shepherd squinted at the sky. “Could be. He always liked ’em young, and the older he got the younger he liked ’em. Sex was always his downfall.”
I didn’t believe Shepherd. I didn’t disbelieve him. The mind that looked at me through his eyes was like muddy water continually stirred by fears and fantasies and greeds. He was growing old in the desperate hope of money, and by now he was willing to become whatever the hope suggested.
“Where are you going now, Randy? To Mexico?”
He was quiet for a moment, peering out across the flatland toward the sun, which was halfway down the west. A Navy jet flew over like a swallow towing the noises of a freight
train. Shepherd watched it out of sight, as if it represented his last disappearing luck.