Black Money la-13

by Ross Macdonald

  She hung her head. Her hair swung forward like a flexible ball. "I know. I try to give it to him, honestly."

  She had reverted to her little-girl voice. It didn't suit her mood though, and she dropped it. She said in a clear sharp voice she had used with her son the day before: "We never should have married, Taps and I. He shouldn't have married at all. Sometimes he reminds me of a medieval priest. The two best years of his life came before our marriage. He often tells me this. He spent them in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, not long after the war. I knew nothing of this, of course, but I was just a kid and he was the white hope of the French department at Illinois and all the other sophomores said how wonderful it would be to be married to him, with his Scott Fitzgerald good looks, and I thought I could finish my education at home."

  She looked over the partition at the kitchen sink. "That, I certainly have."

  "You married very young."

  "Seventeen," she said. "The terrible thing is, I still feel seventeen inside."

  She touched herself between her breasts. "With everything ahead, you know? But nothing is."

  For the first time the woman was coming through to me.

  "You have your children."

  "Sure, I have my children. And don't think I don't do my best for them and always will. Is that all there is, though?"

  "It's more than some people have."

  "I want more."

  Her pretty red mouth looked pathetically greedy. "I've wanted more for a long time, but I've never had the nerve to take it."

  "You have to wait for it to be given," I said.

  "You're full of sententious remarks, aren't you? You're fuller than La Rochefoucauld, or my husband. But you can't solve actual problems with words, as Taps thinks you can. He doesn't understand life. He's nothing but a talking machine, with a computer instead of a heart and a central nervous system."

  The thought of her husband seemed to nag her continually. It was almost making her eloquent, but I was growing weary of her boxed-in tension. Perhaps I had brought it on, but basically it had nothing to do with me. I said: "This is all very interesting, but you were going to talk about Feliz Cervantes."

  "I was, wasn't I."

  Her look became meditative. "He was a very interesting young man. A hot-blooded type, aggressive, the kind of man you imagine a bullfighter might be. He was only twenty-two or three - so was I for that matter - but he was a man. You know?"

  "Did you talk to him?"

  "A little."

  "What about?"

  "Our pictures, mostly. He was very keen on French art. He said he was determined to visit Paris some day."

  "He said that?"

  "Yes. It's not surprising. Every student of French wants to go to Paris. I used to want to go myself."

  "What else did he say?"

  "That was about all. Some of the other students turned up, and he shied away from me. Taps said afterwards - we had a quarrel after the party - he said that I had been obvious with the young man. I think Taps brought you here to have me confess. My husband is a very subtle punisher."

  "You're both too subtle for me. Confess what?"

  "That I was - interested in Feliz Cervantes. But he wasn't interested in me. I wasn't even in the room as far as he was concerned."

  "That's hard to believe."

  "Is it? There was a young blonde girl from one of Taps's freshman courses at the party. He followed her with his eyes the way I imagine Dante followed Beatrice."

  Her voice was cold with envy.

  "What was her name?"

  "Virginia Fablon. I think she's still at the college."

  "She quit to get married."

  "Really? Who was the lucky man?"

  "Feliz Cervantes."

  I told her how this could be. She listened raptly.

  While Bess got ready to go shopping I moved around the living room looking at the reproductions of a world that had never quite dared to exist. The house had taken on an intense interest for me, like a historical monument or the birth-place of a famous man. Cervantes/Martel and Ginny had met in this house; which made it the birthplace of my case.

  Bess came out of her room. She had changed into a dress which had to be hooked up the back and I was elected to hook it up. Though she had a strokeable-looking back, my hands were careful not to wander. The easy ones were nearly always trouble: frigid or nympho, schizy or commercial or alcoholic, sometimes all five at once. Their nicely wrapped gifts of themselves often turned out to be homemade bombs, or fudge with arsenic in it.

  We drove to the Plaza in ticking silence. It was a large new shopping centre, like a campus with asphalt instead of lawns where nothing could be learned. I gave her money, which she accepted, to take a taxi home. It was a friendly gesture, too friendly under the circumstances. But she looked at me as if I was abandoning her to a fate worse than life.

  20

  SHORE DRIVE RAN along the sea below the college in an area of explosive growth and feeble zoning. It was a jumble of apartment buildings, private houses, and fraternity houses with Greek letters over the door.

  Behind the stucco house numbered 148 a half-dozen semidetached cottages were huddled on a small lot. A stout woman opened the door of the house before I reached it.

  "I'm full up till June."

  "I don't need lodging, thanks. Are you Mrs. Grantham?"

  "I never buy door-to-door, it that's what's on your mind."

  "All I want is a little information."

  I told her my name and occupation. "Mr. Martin at the college gave me your name."

  "Why didn't you say so? Come in."

  The door opened into a small, densely furnished living room. We sat down facing each other, knees almost touching. "I hope it isn't a complaint about one of my boys. They're like sons to me," she said with a professionally maternal smile.

  She made an expansive gesture toward the fireplace. The mantel and the wall above it were completely taken up with graduation pictures of young men.

  "Not one of your recent boys, anyway. This one goes back seven years. Do you remember Feliz Cervantes?"

  I showed her the picture with Martel-Cervantes in the background, Ketchel and Kitty in the foreground. She put on glasses to study it.

  "I remember all three of them. The big man and the blondie, they came by and picked up his stuff when he left. The three of them rode away together."

  "Are you sure of that, Mrs. Grantham?"

  "I'm sure. My late husband always said I've got a memory like an elephant. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't forget that trio. They rode away in a Rolls Royce car, and I wondered what a Mexican boy was doing in that kind of company."

  "Cervantes was Mexican?"

  "Sure he was, in spite of all his stories. I didn't want to take him in at first. I never had a Mexican roomer before. But the college says you have to or lose your listing, so I rented him a room. He didn't last long, though."

  "What stories did he tell?"

  "He was full of stories," she said. "When I asked him if he was a Mex., he said he wasn't. I've lived in California all my life, and I can tell a Mex. when I see one. He even had an accent, which he claimed was a Spanish accent. He said he was a pureblooded Spaniard, from Spain.

  "So I said, show me your passport. He didn't have one. He said he was a fugitive from his country, that General Franco was after him for fighting the government. He didn't take me in though. I know a Mex. when I see one. If you ask me he was probably a wetback, and that's why he lied. He didn't want the Immigration to put him on a bus and send him home."

  "Did he tell any other lies?"

  "You bet he did, right up to the day he left. He said when he left he was on his way to Paris, that he was going to the University there. He said the Spanish government had released some of his family money, and he could afford to go to a better school than ours. Good riddance of bad rubbish is what I said."

  "You didn't like Cervantes, did you?"

  "He was all right, in his place.
But he was too uppity. Besides, here he was leaving me on the first of October, leaving me stuck with an empty room for the rest of the semester. It made me sorry I took him in the first place."

  "How was he uppity, Mrs. Grantham?"

  "Lots of ways. Do you have a cigarette by any chance?"

  I gave her one and lit it for her. She blew smoke in my face. "Why are you so interested in him? Is he back in town?"

  "He has been."

  "What do you know. He told me he was going to come back. Come back in a Rolls Royce with a million dollars and marry a girl from Montevista. That was uppity. I told him he should stick to his own kind. But he said she was the only girl for him."

  "Did he name her?"

  "Virginia Fablon. I knew who she was. My own daughter went to high school with her. She was a beautiful girl, I imagine she still is."

  "Cervantes thinks so. He just married her."

  "You're kidding."

  "I wish I were. He came back a couple of months ago. In a Bentley, not a Rolls, with a hundred and twenty thousand instead of a million. But he married her."

  "Well, I'll be."

  Mrs. Grantham drew deep on her cigarette as if she were sucking the juice from the situation. "Wait until I tell my daughter."

  "I wouldn't tell anyone for a day or two. Cervantes and Virginia have dropped out of sight. She may be in danger."

  "From him?" she said with avidity.

  "Could be."

  I didn't know what he wanted from Virginia: it was probably something that didn't exist and I didn't know what he'd do when he found out that it didn't exist.

  Mrs. Grantham put out her cigarette in a Breakwater Hotel ashtray and dropped the butt into a handle-less teacup, which contained other butts. She leaned toward me confidentially, heartily: "Anything else you want to know?"

  "Yes. Did Cervantes give you any explanation about the people who took him away?"

  "This pair?"

  She laid a finger on the picture in her lap. "I forget what he said exactly. I think he said they were friends of his, coming to pick him up."

  "He didn't say who they were?"

  "No, but they looked like they were loaded. I think he said that they were Hollywood people, and they were going to put him on the plane."

  "What, plane?"

  "The plane to France. I thought at the time it was a lot of malarkey. But now I don't know. Did he ever make it to France?"

  "I think he did."

  "Where did he get the money? You think his family really has money in Spain?"

  "Castles in Spain, anyway."

  I thought as I drove away that Martel was one of those dangerous dreamers who acted out his dreams, a liar who forced his lies to become true. His world was highly colored and man made, like the pictures on the Tappingers' walls which might have been his first vision of France.

  21

  THE CASHIER of Mercy Hotel had eyes like calculators. She peered at me through the bars of her cage as if she was estimating my income, subtracting my expenses, and coming up with a balance in the red.

  "How much am I worth?"

  I said cheerfully.

  "Dead or alive?"

  That stopped me. "I want to pay for Mr. Harry Hendricks for another day."

  "It isn't necessary," she said. "His wife took care of it."

  "The redhead? Was she here?"

  "She came in and visited him for a few minutes this morning."

  "Can I see him?"

  "You'll have to ask the head nurse on the third floor."

  The head nurse was a starched, thin-mouthed woman who kept me waiting while she brought her records up to date. Eventually she let me tell her that I was a detective working with the police. She got quite friendly then.

  "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't ask him some questions. But don't tire him, and don't say anything to upset him."

  Harry was in a private room with windows, which overlooked the city. With the bandages on his head and face he looked like an unfinished mummy.

  I was carrying the pearl-gray hat, and his eyes focused on it. "Is that my hat?"

  "It's the one you were wearing yesterday. The name inside is Spillman, though. Who's he?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "You were wearing his hat."

  "Was I?"

  He lay and thought about it. "I got it at a rummage sale."

  I didn't believe him, but there was no point in saying so. I tossed the hat onto the chest of drawers. "Who clobbered you, Harry?"

  "I don't know for sure. I didn't see him. It was dark, and he knocked me out from behind. Then he stomped on my face, the doctor says."

  "Nice guy. Was it Martel?"

  "Yeah. It happened up at his place. I was poking around the back of his house. The wind was making so much noise I didn't hear him come up behind me."

  His fingers crawled over the sheet which covered his body. "He must of given me quite a going over. I'm sore all over."

  "You were in an auto accident."

  "I was?"

  "Martel put you in the trunk of your car and parked it on the waterfront. Some winos stole and wrecked it."

  He groaned. "It isn't mine. My own clunk died on me, and I borrowed the Caddie off the lot. No insurance, no nothing. Is she a total goner?"

  "It wouldn't be worth the price of the body work."

  "Wouldn't you know it. There goes another job."

  He lay silent for a minute, looking at the sky. "I've been thinking about myself this aft. I bet - no, I won't bet, I'll just say it: I'm the biggest failure west of the Mississippi. I don't even deserve to live."

  "Everybody deserves that."

  "It's nice of you to say so. Incidentally, they told me a Mr. Archer made the down payment on this pad. Was that you? "I chipped in twenty."

  "Thanks muchly. You're a real pal."

  "Forget it. I'm on an expense account."

  But he was touched. "I guess I'm lucky - lucky to be alive, for one thing. Then my wife came to see me, which makes it old home week."

  "Is Kitty still in town?"

  "I doubt it. She said she was leaving." His head lay inert on the pillow for a moment. "I didn't know you knew her."

  "We had a talk last night. She's a beautiful woman."

  "Don't I know it. When I lost her it was like losing the moon and stars, boy."

  "Did Ketchel take her away from you?"

  Another silence. "You know him, too?"

  "I know something about him. What I know I don't like."

  "The more you learn the less you'll like it," he said. "The one great foolish mistake of my life was getting caught in his meat-hooks. It lost me Kitty."

  "How so?"

  "I'm a gambler," he said. "I don't know why. I just am. I love to gamble. It makes me feel alive. I must be nuts."

  His eyes seemed to be looking down a hole. "So one hot morning about dawn I walked out of the Scorpion Club into Fremont Street with nothing, no wife, nothing. How do you like that? I lost my wife in a crap game. She was so disgusted with me she went with him and stayed."

  "With Ketchel?"

  Harry lay looking at the hat on the bureau. "His real name is Leo Spillman. Ketchel is just a name he uses. It's an old-time boxing name. Kayo Ketchel, he called himself. He was a pretty good light-heavy before he went into the rackets full-time."

  "What rackets is he in, Harry?"

  "Name it and he has a piece of it, or used to have. He started in slot machines in the Middle West and got fat off of army bases. You might say that he's still in slot machines. He's majority owner of the Scorpion Club in Vegas."

  "Funny I never heard his name."

  "He's a concealed owner, I think they call it. He learned to keep his name quiet, like traveling under the name of Ketchel. Leo Spillman is a name with a bad smell. Of course he's semi-retired now, I haven't seen him for years."

  "How did you get hold of his hat?"

  "Kitty gave it to me when she came to see me last week. Leo's
a much bigger man than I am but we have the same size head, seven-and-a-quarter. And I needed a hat to go up against the people in Montevista."

  "Where can I find Leo?"

  "I guess you could try the Scorpion Club. He used to have a suite there next to his office. I know him and Kitty have a hideout someplace in Southern Cal, but she never gave me a hint of where it is."

  "What about his cattle ranch?"

  "He sold that long ago. Kitty didn't like to see them branding the calves."

  "You've kept in pretty close touch with her."

  "Not really. But I've seen her over the years. When she gets in a real jam, or has a real need, she comes to old Harry."

  He raised his head a few inches from the pillow and looked at me. "I'm leveling with you, Archer, and you know why? I need a cohort, a partner."

  "So you said yesterday."

  "I need one worse today."

  With a slow sweep of his chin he called attention to his helplessness, and let his head fall back on the pillow. "And you've been a real pal. I'm going to offer you an equal share of a really big deal."

  "Like a concussion?"

  "I'm serious. There may be more than a hundred grand up for grabs. Is that laughable?"

  "You mean the money Martel-Cervantes stole?"

  "Martel-who-did-you-say?"

  "Cervantes. That's another name Martel used."

  "Then he's the man!"

  Harry sat up in his excitement. "We've got him."

  "Unfortunately we haven't got him. He's on the run, with a hundred grand in cash. Even if we do get hold of it, won't Leo Spillman want it back?"

  "Naw."

  His hand slid up in a steep gesture. "A hundred grand or two hundred is just peanuts to Leo. He'll let us keep it, Kitty said he would. The money they're really after, Kitty and him, is up in the millions."

  His hand went up to the full length of his arm and stayed there for a second in a kind of salute. He fell back onto the pillow.

  "Martel stole millions from him?"

  "So Kitty said."

  "She must be stringing you. There's no way to steal a million dollars, unless you rob a Brink's truck."

  "Yes, there is. And she isn't lying, she never has to me. You got to understand that this is the chance of a lifetime."